


Fault Lines

by SofiaBane



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Any sort of romance won't happen until Harry is 17, But Tomarry is endgame don't worry, Let's see how far the Harry/Neville thing goes, M/M, Maybe still a student maybe not but he won't be any younger, Or at least strategic Voldemort, Politics, Professor Tom Riddle, Remix of a lot of canon plot, Sane Voldemort (Harry Potter), Secret Identity, Slow Burn, Voldemort is Batman and Tom is Bruce Wayne, essentially, lots of dream sequences
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-02-15
Updated: 2019-10-23
Packaged: 2019-10-28 16:00:54
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 7
Words: 54,833
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17790422
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SofiaBane/pseuds/SofiaBane
Summary: After the world believes that Voldemort has died on that Halloween night, Tom Riddle returns to Hogwarts to claim the Defense post at last. Hogwarts will be a sanctuary, while he waits to find out more about Harry Potter and the prophecy that connects them. But when Grindelwald is broken out of prison, perhaps the magical world needs Voldemort to be publicly resurrected after all.





	1. Chapter 1

_April 1982._ Tom Marvolo Riddle walks with a slight limp up the sloping Hogwarts grounds.

It had been thirty years, hard-fought and barely lost, since he’d stepped on these grounds. _His_ heritage, _his_ home. Slytherin’s magic rises to meet him.

At eighteen he had asked Armando Dippet for the Defense post. Dumbledore had impeded him then; Tom expects he will impede him again today. But he’s got business at the castle, regardless

After this initial denial, Tom had squandered his good marks and raw brilliance on a shopkeeping job in Knockturn Alley. He first inherits the acquisitions specialist position of Borgin and Burke’s, then later he inherits the store in its entirety. That has, _officially_ , been his sole engagement for the past thirty years.

Unofficially, he had been collecting and militarizing all the purebloods who came into Borgin and Burke’s. He was not a leader properly – this poor halfblood never could be, no matter how brilliant and sympathetic to the cause he appeared. But they all thought of Tom as _safe_ , and a jewel in the crown of the pureblood reactionary movement. Clever, clever mudblood with all his pretty words and lofty ideals, softly spoken in the backrooms of Borgin and Burke’s. None of the purebloods would bankroll him properly – apparently idle wealth was not even to be wished for by mudbloods – but sometimes they would drop off books or artifacts, waving off the price he offered them. And even if he could never marry into their families, he could get invited to some of their parties, if only as a curiosity.

No, they followed _Voldemort._

Voldemort was a scarce figure in this war, more of a saint or boogeyman than a proper soldier. Tom had always let his customers raise the name before he did, and he was _bewildered_ by some of the things he had been told about himself. For his own part, he had stoked the fires of the 1970s pureblood reactionary movement with letters – first sent to purebloods who he trusted would circulate them within influential circles, then later in the war to the papers directly. He would write of a disappearing culture, the fear the Ministry wished they would live with, the coddled Muggleborns who were unwittingly participating in the genocide of the world they claimed to love. _Lord Voldemort_ , he would sign in a flourish at the bottom, and how satisfying it felt to see his true name in print.

The purebloods fought in this name. It was gratifying. It was exhilarating. He had watched his cosseted Slytherin peers – and their cosseted children and grandchildren – get their hands dirty for the first time in the grit of battle. He watches Dumbledore fight a second war with as much reluctance as he’d fought his first. He watched the Statute of Secrecy come _so_ close to crumbling, so often.

He rarely entered battle himself. The purebloods who fought were not his responsibility and he had asked nothing of them. They could be lost. But the first time he enters battle, affixing a glamour to his face as blank and pale as the masks the Knights of Walpurgis wore, he feels _powerful_. He thinks he should like an army, for a time.

The papers are wrong-footed, struggling to connect the name _Voldemort_ to the unknown assailant who had cut Alastor Moody’s entire team out from under him. The Knights take no notice of him on the battlefield until that moment either, though. But when they see it, when four Aurors are felled by a single Avada Kedavra – Bellatrix Black, the nearest, sinks to her knees in the mud. “My Lord.”

The legends, as always, write themselves.

After every battle, no matter how injured Voldemort has been, Tom makes a point to be at work the next day. “Awful business,” he says sympathetically to the Aurors when they come to subpoena his clients’ list. “You’ll be increasing security nearby, I assume?”

This Auror has ruddy cheeks and a precious, trusting look in his eyes. “Yeah,” he agrees. “You’ll see guards on Diagon Alley, soon.”

“Thank Merlin,” says Tom. “This movement must be stopped.”

There is always speculation about Voldemort’s identity. The guesses are all predictable: it must be the penname of the Lestrange patriarch, the Rookwood patriarch, the Malfoy patriarch. Tom closes the shop for lunch so he can fully appreciate reading each of the Prophet’s fumbling speculations.

Outbreaks of violence dotted the early 1970s, until it’s properly called a civil war by about 1977. The first galvanizing protest by the purebloods had been on Walpurgis Night of 1972, when the Ministry had stormed the Bulstrode estate and attempted to arrest everyone involved in the old, illegal magics of blood sacrifice. The Bulstrodes’ eldest son had died in the crossfire. The Knights had been christened.

In 1980, there is a prophecy.

Voldemort had only graced his followers’ homes with his presence a number of times, but when Malfoy summons him with his own Dark Mark, he finds another ratty halfblood waiting for him. Severus Snape had been spying on Dumbledore, and his knowledge would make him valuable. Voldemort’s glamour gives him a perfectly impassive mark as he listens.

But when Dumbledore also finds out that Voldemort intends to target the boys – the Longbottoms and Potters are both prominent, young, cloying couples in the war, and their pregnancies were already widely known – Voldemort summons Snape to ask whether he should be killed for treason.

“My Lord,” Snape mutters. (Voldemort has not instructed them on how to address him. He likes being unnameable. But the Knights have settled on this, independent of him.) “Dumbledore’s intelligence runs deep, and Hogwarts is impenetrable. But my loyalty has never wavered.”

Voldemort will doubt Snape’s loyalty dozens of times in the years to come. But the detail that he knows is wrong – Hogwarts is _not_ impenetrable. He must only decide how it may be breached.

In the end, though, it does not matter. On Halloween of 1981, he enters Godric’s Hollow. He neatly kills James, then Lily. And then he’s looking into the green eyes of this child protected by his mother’s love, and then his Avada Kedavra rebounds, and then his ribcage shatters and his heart stops and he can feel nothing for a very long time.

He drags himself from this scene, his blood leaking from every pore of his body. He is delirious, but he seems to recall conjuring bones, teeth – just enough. Voldemort must die that night, until a more opportune time. He must learn more about this prophecy. He must learn more about this boy.

The way into Hogwarts he decides upon is simplest – through the front door. The war had always been Dumbledore’s, more than it had been the Ministry’s. Besides, he expects his castle will still love him, shield him, nurture him. He must return.

He kills the Defense professor himself, over his winter holiday. It would raise considerable suspicion to present himself for the upcoming spring term, while Professor Clearwater’s body is practically still cooling, so he listens to the gossip as Albus scrambles for a replacement for the term. And now it is April, and Albus is looking to next year’s staff, and Tom has pulled on his most imposing robes to speak with him.

The castle’s interior seems smaller than he had remembered it. Perhaps that was always the way, revisiting one’s childhood home. He climbs the stairs to the tower office and stands before the gargoyle. “Blood lollies,” he says ( _insipid_ ), and the gargoyle bounds out of his way.

“Tom.” Dumbledore rises to meet him, his turquoise robes glinting in the weak afternoon light. The past decade has aged him, beyond even his advanced age. “Please come in.”

“Thank you” He shuts the door, taking in the office as he strides in. “I don’t believe I ever congratulated you on your position as Headmaster.”

“I am glad you approve.”

Tom takes a seat before Dumbledore’s desk. He had sat here weekly in his time as Head Boy, informing Dippet of everything he should know around the castle. Since those years, Tom’s features have been subtly warped by dark magic and his near-death experience. But he attempts to look young, innocent, studious. “Headmaster Dippet told me to return to inquire about the Defense post – and I have, though years later than he might have expected.”

“Your shop has been quite successful.”

“Yes.”

“You no longer care for it?”

“I’ll sell the shop,” Tom waves this question off. “I’m at last at a place financially that I may embrace my more academic passions.”

Dumbledore studies him. Tom does not feel his Legilimency, but he expects Dumbledore is at least attempting it. Then, breaking his gaze and rising: “Wine?”

Tom attempts not to look skeptical. “Yes. Thank you.”

Dumbledore pours two goblets. “I received this bottle from Lucius Malfoy, upon his appointment to the Hogwarts boards.” He hands Tom the other goblet.

“How kind of him.” Tom knows what Dumbledore is fishing for, and he decides to indulge it. “I lost track of the Malfoy family with Abraxas’s death. Truthfully, I parted ways with most of my peers after Hogwarts.”

“I see.” Dumbledore settles back into his chair. “I assume you are not so detached from Hogwarts, to not hear of Professor Clearwater?”

“I did. A tragedy.”

“It seems the war is not nearly over.” And then Dumbledore looks deep into his wine goblet, considering. “Keep your darker magics away from the student body, would you?”

“Yes, sir.”

 

Tom understands that this post is not borne of trust, but of surveillance. Dumbledore is far too clever to ask outright what Tom’s relations to dark magic or pureblood supremacy or Voldemort are. Tom has taken pains to not be associated with them anyway – he’s quite forthcoming that he is a halfblood raised in the Muggle world, and as such people assume he is persona non grata to _Voldemort’s_ sort.

He begins his time at Hogwarts in the autumn of 1982. He requests quarters in the dungeons, if only for sentimentality. Snape was just taking over for Horace Slughorn, and acted just short of actively hostile toward Tom at their summer staff meetings. Minerva McGonagall, Dumbledore’s favorite and head girl when Tom had been a prefect, welcomes him back to the castle with perfect professionalism. Tom wonders if somehow they suspect him of anything.

So it is _infuriating_ when Dumbledore is the only one to act truly pleased about Tom’s appointment. Tom has always found his jovial demeanor rather sinister, moreso now that they live together and Tom may be more closely watched than ever. It takes him months to learn the castle’s rhythms well enough to even approach the girls’ toilet where the Chamber is located, and even then he does not enter the Chamber itself until nearly the end of his first year. Late one night, he charms a staircase down to its depths.

“ _The heir_?” The basilisk senses him with heat and vibration before he steps before her.

“ _Yes_ ,” he replies, and his Parseltongue comes alive, his native tongue. “ _Lower your eyes_.”

She does, and he charms a cloth over her face. “ _I have been so lonely_ ,” she laments as she slithers after him, as he examines this space from long ago. “ _Even your birds bore me._.”

It had been the least he could do for her before he’d graduated, charming small ports into the chamber to let in birds, skinks, and the occasional less fortunate snake.

“ _I teach here now_ ,” he says.

“ _And the castle is now yours_?”

“ _Not yet_.”

And then he’s examining the wards. Most of the security spells do not extend this far beneath the castle. Including, he finds with satisfaction, the anti-apparition wards. Good.

 

Throughout the next decade, he will listen to pureblood resentments simmer. Many of them, after Voldemort’s death, ended up in Azkaban. The wealthier ones bought their freedom, pleading Imperio or extortion. Tom learns that Dumbledore kept Snape out of prison himself, because Dumbledore believes in such inanities as the power of love.

The Knights’ children all pass through his classroom. He does not command much respect – they know he is not one of them, Slytherin or not. He brooks no discussion of dark magic in his class, per Albus’s request. He deflects when they ask why he lost out on the role of the head of house to a man thirty years younger – not that they respect Severus either, another poor halfblood, because they are the only sort of Slytherin Albus will hire. He sees his students through OWLs and NEWTs. He is, by all measures, a good teacher.

And then comes the autumn of 1991.

The staff meetings of that summer spoke of Potter often enough. He may not be entirely safe, and he wouldn’t go entirely without some fame and spectacle, but Albus swears he is a good and well-adjusted child. Minerva wonders whether the Slytherins will bear him any ill will for ending the war and being a catalyst (“not the _cause_ , of course,” she stresses) for the imprisonment of many of their parents. “Undoubtedly,” Snape intones, his gaze dark on hers. “If he comes to me with any problems, I will speak to them.”

They discuss the rest of the cohort – it is small even for a class born during wartime, because 1980 was a particularly bloody year. Tom cannot _fathom_ bringing a child into the world under those circumstances; he assumes all thirty of these new students were accidents. It is disgusting and selfish, regardless.

When Tom assists in re-enchanting the castle’s wards, he is taking in the sight of as many as he can. They will be useful, later. The enchanted ceiling, less so, but he takes his spot beside Bathsheda as Flitwick instructs them in re-casting it anyway.

At last, September 1. The castle buzzed – not just the faculty, portraits, and ghosts, but seemingly the stones themselves. Hogwarts was built with a _purpose_.

Tom chooses some of his least dramatic robes for the opening feast – dark blue, in soft cottons and silks. He ties his hair back but for the loose curl over his forehead he could never tame. He enters the Great Hall.

He nearly misses Potter when he first enters, surrounded by a Weasley boy, a blond boy, and a girl who must be a Mudblood for the way she’s looking at it all. Potter looks everything and nothing like his father – dark hair and glasses, but while James had held his shoulders back and chin high in battle, Harry’s are tucked downward, taking up as little space as possible.

Curious.

The sorting proceeds as usual. The fluffy-haired girl is named Granger and is sorted into Gryffindor; the blond boy is named Longbottom and becomes a Gryffindor as well. At this, Tom attempts not to stare, but – _damn it_. Longbottom looks as though he couldn’t tie his own shoes. Tom had intended to kill him as well, after he’d finished off the Potters, as it had only been happenstance that Pettigrew had come to him first. But Longbottom is now taking a seat beside Granger, narrowly avoiding putting his hand in a butter dish.

Tom would be embarrassed to have this… sprog as his downfall, anyway. He hopes Potter is more competent.

All the Knights’ children get sorted into Slytherin, with Malfoy getting sorted quickest of all. Tom only claps for the Slytherins as much as the others – it has never benefited him to look as though he plays favorites, and indeed he can offer himself as the impartial and judicious alternative to Severus. He allows his gaze to follow the Malfoy child to the Slytherin table, where he falls in beside some of the older students.

A few more sortings, and then it’s Potter.

He looks more at ease now than he had upon entering, and he squares his shoulders before lowering himself onto the stool. And then… nothing.

Tom doesn’t know what he had expected. Both of Potter’s parents had been Gryffindors, but it hardly matters since he hadn’t been raised by them. (Who _had_ raised him? Albus had cannily avoided all such questions.) The entire hall is watching now. Potter’s lips are moving silently, as though having a great row with the hat.

For a moment Tom wonders incredulously if the boy could become a Slytherin.

But then – “Gryffindor!” And the Gryffindor house explodes in cheers, and the Weasley twins are throwing up confetti, and the Gryffindor prefects are clearly hissing at them that they will give out detention before the feast even starts, so help them god. Harry slips from the stool to join his classmates. Tom only allows himself to watch the boy for a moment longer than is prudent.

 

After the feast, Tom has the misfortune of falling in step with Snape. “I expect you’ve already heard from Lucius,” Tom says lightly.

Snape shakes his head. “Narcissa.” He sounds tired. “I must pen my congratulations tonight.”

“I was in school with Abraxas,” Tom offers. “You should be fortunate if Draco has even a measure of his talent in potions.”

“And you should be fortunate if Crabbe and Goyle’s sons don’t hex each other blind when they grow bored in class.”

Snape knows the Knights’ children from his own time in Voldemort’s service. Crabbe and Goyle Seniors could serve as little more than enforcers then. Tom finds it quite funny that he and Severus should have the same disdain for the same Knights. “I will persevere,” he promises. “Goodnight, Severus.”

“Goodnight.” He sweeps away, presumably to rescue the stragglers who hadn’t followed their prefects into the common rooms.

As soon as Tom is within his chambers, he is loosening his tie, shrugging off his robes. “ _Nagini_?”

While she is not properly nocturnal, she comes alive at night, most often keeping Tom company as he writes or researches. She pokes a sleepy head from his bedroom door. “ _Yes_?”

“ _Another year of students. I saw him. He is so – ordinary_.”

Nagini is his only confidante, the only one to understand Voldemort’s identity and Tom’s past. “ _It is too late to kill him?_ ” she asks.

“… _Not entirely_.”

\---

Harry has been sick to his stomach all week, even now that he’s made it to Hogwarts and they are really not sending him back to the Dursleys. It’s all a sensory overload, the noise and people and food and _magic_. It seems as though he can nearly taste it sometimes, like the scent of a storm.

He assumes this is why he wakes up to his scar hurting more often than not, these days. Hagrid had told him it was Voldemort’s curse scar, and probably magic in its own right.

On this morning, he’s got a hand clasped to his forehead, the scar faintly warm and raised to the touch. He’ll need to get up soon, though: they’ve got Defense first thing Friday mornings, and while Professor Riddle doesn’t seem cruel in the way Professor Snape is, he has been perfectly cool and a bit stern in class so far. He also will not make eye contact with Harry, such that Harry can’t shake the feeling that he’s already done something wrong. Sloughing off the sheets, Harry rolls out of his four poster bed.

\---

Tom learns to live alongside Harry. He must use Occlumency to keep his magic contained when Harry is nearby, because otherwise their auras spark and clash. Harry wouldn’t recognize it – if he thought it was anything in particular, it was probably only that he assumed the castle’s magic was overwhelming him. But Tom begins to wear leather gloves to class, in case, and he brings in venomous subjects early in term to justify it.

Curious. He wonders what Potter’s magic has to do with his own. Prophecies do not typically forge tangible bonds like this; he’d pulled a few books from the Hogwarts library to check. Nor does an attempted murder. But it is undeniable that his magic reacts to Potter’s. And apparently the poor child has suffered chronic headaches since getting here.

Harry is a mediocre student, both in his class and all the others, given what he overhears in the teachers’ lounge. He is a natural flier – Minerva makes the shockingly unprofessional and unilateral decision to get him on the Quidditch team as a first year – but otherwise he does nothing exceptionally well.

Tom is so _vexed_ by this, finding his opponent almost as mediocre as the Longbottom child, that partway through Harry’s second year he gives Harry detention out of spite. “Your wandwork is sloppy,” he nearly snaps in class. “Detention tonight so that we may correct it.”

Harry looks up sharply, but Granger speaks first. “But sir – Harry’s no worse than – “ And then she shuts her mouth abruptly, as she well should.

“No worse than whom, Ms. Granger?” He expects she was about to betray either Longbottom or Weasley.

“Than anyone else. Sir.”

“Detention, Mr. Potter,” Tom says with finality. He has found the best way to handle Granger is to politely disregard her. Potter… he doesn’t know how to handle Potter yet, honestly.

 

When Potter arrives at his office that night, he does not even have the good grace to hide how perfectly _seething_ he is. He drops the detention slip onto Tom’s desk, his bookbag into a chair. Then he stands there, hands shoved in fists into his pockets.

Tom’s first inclination is to offer him tea. His second is a quiet horror that he might have at long last absorbed some of Albus’s pedagogy, bringing students to his office to feed them. He suppresses this instinct. “Please sit down.” And he does the same.

Harry’s posture loses none of its tension when he’s seated. “I don’t know why I’m here. Sir.”

“As I said in class, you are here because your schoolwork is lackluster.”

“So what?” When Tom meets his gaze, Harry realizes how hideously disrespectful he sounds, but he’s entrenched in his righteous anger by now. “I’ve done fine. I get Es and Os on all the exams. The things I don’t know are because I didn’t grow up with all of this. _Sir_.”

The feelings which Tom swallows originate with his own childhood, the sense that magic had _saved_ him from the hideous violence of the Muggle world. Potter should be grateful, to have been delivered from whatever Muggles raised him. But Tom will not pursue this now. “Your work is as adequate as your peers’,” he says. “But it lacks urgency.”

“It lacks _urgency_?” Harry repeats in disbelief.

“None of the lives of your peers has ever been threatened. Yours has.” It is shameful and frustrating that he must _explain_ these things to Potter. Does the boy have no sense of self-preservation? “One would expect that you’d take more interest in learning to protect yourself And to fight.”

He knows it is perverse, that he should wish his fated enemy to be stronger. But Potter will reflect on him. And there is no glory in defeating an uncoordinated, unlearned child. Tom doesn’t know when the correct time will come to defeat Potter for good, but it will bring him no glory and no respect to take him out now.

But Harry is still resistant “He’s dead. And all his followers are dead, or in prison.” When Tom remains quiet, Harry falters. “You don’t think so?”

How easy it would be to assure Potter that he’s in no danger. Instead, he asks, “What has Dumbledore told you?”

Harry sizes him up. Tom has not been his confidant – actually, from what he’s observed, Harry’s only adult confidant in this entire school is that monster lover Hagrid. “A bit,” he says, guarded. “He says I’m protected now. By enchantments.”

This interests Tom, but of course he can’t pursue it. But before he can formulate his response, Harry asks, “Is it normal for curse scars to hurt?” His fingers go to his fringe, brushing it away to rub at his perfect scar. “Because it does, sometimes. And we can’t find anything in the library,” ( _we_ means Granger and Weasley, who have become his entourage) “but it makes me think… he’s not dead like everyone says.” Harry’s eyes seem very green in the firelight as he looks up. “Or is that stupid?”

“No. It’s not stupid.” Tom sits back, considering. “That magic is unprecedented, of course. And nobody has heard from Voldemort in quite a long time.” (Ah, it feels so good to speak his true name aloud. And better when he sees Potter’s eyes alight in interest, as Albus must have fed him those lines about _fear of a name_. Potter will come to his own conclusion that Tom is a member of the resistance.) “In any case, I did not bring you here tonight to scare you. Merely to tell you – there may come a time when you are expected to defend yourself. Don’t take this possibility lightly.”

“Yes, sir.” But then Harry bites the corner of his mouth, as he does sometimes. “If I were to – practice more….”

It is perverse to wish one’s opponent were stronger; it is absurd to actually provide him the tools necessary. However. “You need to learn to duel,” he says, rising from his seat to approach his bookcase.

He is stopped mid-stride when Harry makes an incredulous noise in the back of his throat. Tom looks back, and Harry has the decency to flush. “Sorry. But – Voldemort,” (tentative, testing his limits, but Tom quite likes hearing his name aloud again) “doesn’t duel people before he kills them. Does he?”

“He does.”

“And… my parents, then?”

 _How should I know_ , Tom would love to respond, but of course he does. James held him off for three spells. Lily hadn’t raised her wand at all. A pathetic showing. “I don’t know.” He attempts to make his tone gentle at this. “You haven’t sought out the relevant books, then?”

“No, sir.”

He plucks _The Duelist’s Companion_ off his shelf, then takes a letter pad from his desk drawer. “Many of the books about the Dark War are kept in the restricted section. The board finds them salacious.” (Not strictly true – the board finds them _embarrassing_ because so many respected pureblood families like themselves had been caught on the losing side. But Harry wouldn’t understand this, yet.) He writes the permission slip – and he puts Weasley and Granger’s names at the top alongside Harry’s, he may as well – and tucks it into the book’s front cover. “Do not duel Ms. Granger,  as it would devastate her when she maims you. And do not duel Longbottom.” A flicker of amusement across Harry’s face indicates his quiet horror at the prospect. “Anyone else in your year would be acceptable. If you could overcome your antipathy for Mr. Malfoy, I believe you would be well-matched. At the very least, he would know how to keep such activities away from the eyes of faculty, since we cannot officially sanction such behavior.” Dueling itself had become distasteful to more progressive wizards in the past few decades, because the Muggles found such violence barbaric, and Merlin help them all if the Muggles wouldn’t approve. Tom has argued in favor of reinstating the dueling club that had existed in his own time, every year before term, and had obviously been unsuccessful.

Harry is looking at the permission slip tucked into the book. They share a secret now, a meager one but a secret nonetheless. “Were you a Slytherin?”

“Why would you think so?”

Harry raises a shoulder in a shrug. “People just don’t know. They all wonder.”

God help him, he stirred _intrigue_ among this group of students, who had never known that Albus had passed over him as Slytherin head of house a decade ago. “I was. It becomes less relevant in adulthood.”

“I was almost a Slytherin,” Harry volunteers. As though they are confidants now. Merlin’s sake. Tom schools his features into polite curiosity. Harry goes on. “The sorting hat said I could do _great things_ in Slytherin.”

At least that explained the delay in his sorting. “Instead, you chose Gryffindor.”

“Yeah.” ( _Yes, sir_ , Tom does not chastise, swallowing his irritation instead.)

“Why?”

Harry curls a lock of hair around his finger, considering. “All the Slytherins seemed….” He stops himself. “I didn’t think I’d fit in. Sir.”

This is probably best,” Tom agrees.

Harry’s eyebrows go up. He’d been expecting something more politic or equivocating. “It is?”

This time, Tom’s smile is nearly real. “Imagine the drama if the Boy Who Lived had ended up in Voldemort’s own house. There would be whispers that you were fated to become a dark lord yourself.”

Harry suppresses a shudder. “Best that I’m a Gryffindor instead,” he agrees.

Perhaps, someday, Tom will pry a bit into Potter’s ambitions, whether there _is_ any sort of possibility that he is interested in power. But not tonight. “You may go,” he says. “Return next week to tell me what you’ve learned.”

“Yes, sir.” Potter doesn’t even protest that it’s technically detention. “Goodnight.” Dropping the dueling book in his bag, he leaves.

And Tom remains behind his desk, for the moment. Stupid, trusting boy.

 

It’s not a standing occasion, exactly. Harry returns to say he and Weasley had practiced the tongue-tying curse on each other until their mouths bled, “and then we stopped so people wouldn’t get suspicious.”

“Suspicious of what, exactly?”

Potter goes a bit red. Of course they’d all assume something lewd. They’re twelve. “Nothing,” he says. “But – it’d be good, wouldn’t it, to keep your opponents from being able to cast spells?”

At this, Tom _is_ surprised. He had anticipated Potter and Weasley would choose the flashiest, stupidest spells to begin with. Instead Potter chose something _tactical_. He finds himself feeling pleased. “Spells can also be cast non-verbally,” he says. “But yes.” Potter is waiting. “Well done,” he adds, assuming that is what he wants to hear.

It is. Smiling at him, Potter shoves the book back into his bag. “Thank you, sir.”

“You are welcome to my office hours if you have any further questions.”

“You’ve got office hours?”

 _This_ , this is what he should want in an opponent, a complacent simpleton. “I do. Ask Ms. Granger when and where they may be held.”

Potter understands he is being chastised, but he is still pleased with himself. “Yes, sir.”

\---

When Potter returns to Hogwarts for his third year, Tom comes to the unfortunate conclusion that Harry _likes_ him. On their first day of class, he comes in beaming. “How was your summer, sir?”

“None of your concern, Mr. Potter. Take your seat.”

It’s like kicking a puppy. The smile is wiped decisively from Potter’s face, and is gone for the rest of class.

Perhaps it would make Tom’s… work simpler if Potter kept close to him, became _loyal_ to him. But – well, he is uncomfortable. Some of his Slytherin students have attempted to be strategic in maintaining a good relationship with him, though they mostly have recognized that he holds no power or prestige that they want. Some of the Ravenclaws love his class if not him personally. Some of the Gryffindors wish his class were more about heroics, predictably. And the Hufflepuffs are just terrified, of him and everything else.

But he is rarely _liked_ , personally. He has never wished to be. His relationships with his colleagues are cool, even with Albus, who has become more insufferable with age. His contacts he had made from Borgin and Burke’s had dried up when he’d sold the store. He has Nagini, and that’s as much as he cares for.

So within this lecture, he manages to slip in a slight about how none of the Gryffindors he’s ever known have even bothered with defensive spells before running into battle, preferring to simply get themselves killed instead. And while he hadn’t _intended_ to evoke Potter’s dead parents, nor does he regret it. Potter and his entourage leave the classroom much more quietly than they’d entered.

Good.

\---

“I really thought we were okay,” Harry mutters when he and Ron re-enter their dorm. He tosses the Defense textbook onto his bed. “I don’t know that he _liked_ me – “

“Mate, he doesn’t seem to like anyone. Have you seen the way he looks at Dumbledore?”

Harry frowns. “Yeah. Dumbledore must see it too, I’ve no idea how he gets away with it. – But I thought at least that we were on good terms.”’

“Snape hates you more,” Ron reassures him as they stuff Potions books in their bags.

“Yeah,” Harry sighs. “I just thought there may be one good Slytherin.”

“Nah,” Ron says easily. “But don’t let it get to you. – Shit, we’re gonna miss the stairs if we don’t leave now – “ He’s grabbing his potions set, slinging it over his shoulder. So Harry does the same.

 

Potions is, as usual, a nightmare, and Harry’s still got a splitting headache at lunchtime. He and Dumbledore don’t speak often – Dumbledore is busy, and Harry is sure a headache is a minute nuisance compared with what troubles him – but they’d had a meeting the previous year, when Dumbledore agreed that Voldemort was perhaps not as dead as everyone would like to believe. He asks Harry if he’s ever had any insight into Voldemort’s presence, if perhaps he’s dreamt of circumstances he’s not been in himself, or people he’s never met? He hasn’t. He wants to, if it would help find and defeat the man who killed his parents. But at the time, all he says is, “No, sir,” and then Dumbledore sort of nods and ushers him from his office. So now whenever he’s got a headache (bloody often), he is always straining a bit to see or hear or recall experiences not his own.

He wants to be a hero. His parents had been heroes.

 

So this is how his third year progresses. He’s kept busy with classes, Quidditch, friends. He drops _The Duelist’s Companion_ on Professor Riddle’s desk a few weeks into in the term, having taken it home for the summer. (Of course he couldn’t actually practice the spells, but he could still learn incantations and wand motions with Dudley throwing fits downstairs.) They don’t speak; Harry will never learn what he’d done wrong. But it hardly matters. He is busy with typical, thirteen year old concerns and very little saving the world.

And then comes his fourth year, when everything gets complicated.

\---

Harry’s entrance feast of his fourth year, Dumbledore steps up to the lectern looking unusually grave. “Good evening,” he says, looking out over the student body, with the newly-sorted ones still practically vibrating with excitement. “Welcome to a new year, and as always, a new adventure with it. However, tonight I bring you more solemn news, a circumstance that unfolded as you traveled today to the safety of this castle. The dark wizard Grindelwald was broken out of Nurmengard by his followers. His whereabouts are unknown. We will be doubling the castle’s fortressing spells to ensure your utmost safety. But dark times lie ahead.”

Harry has never seen Dumbledore so concerned. Apparently none of the student body had. So he is scanning the faculty table for signs of – anything, of confidence and fear alike. All the faculty look grave, their gazes on Dumbledore. Except for Professor Riddle, who happens to be looking out over the student body as well. He catches Harry’s eye. A nod, and he looks away.

He needs to try harder with Riddle. He’s good at Defense, and apparently they will need it. He wants to be a soldier, a hero, someone worthy of the wizarding world’s adoration of him. He makes a mental note to find out if Voldemort could have anything to do with Grindelwald, but whether he does or not, Harry feels quite responsible for keeping this world safe. He will speak to Professor Riddle after their first class tomorrow, to ask what he should learn to fight a war.

\---

Tom finds himself gritting his teeth as the faculty decamps to a meeting, following the opening feast. Albus might have warned them earlier, so they didn’t receive news of Grindelwald’s breakout in front of their students.

He settles into a seat between Flitwick and Babbling. Minerva and Albus stand a bit apart from the room, having dropping a silencing spell around themselves. Hagrid, that _stupid_ monster, may already be weeping behind a kerchief the size of a bath towel.

At last, Albus settles at the head of the table. “Quite unfortunate circumstances,” he says, and apart from a few solemnly bowed heads, there is no response.

Tom is quite certain that not everyone knows of Dumbledore and Grindelwald’s sordid history. He likely planned it for today, the most visible and obnoxious day to plan an escape that will upset the Headmaster of Hogwarts.

Voldemort thinks very little of Grindelwald, but he respects this, in a perverse way.

But for now it is his job as well to secure Hogwarts. He agrees to work with Babbling to draw new wards around the castle’s perimeter. Dumbledore says the Ministry wants to bring in its own security, Aurors or Dementors, and he may not be able to reject all of them.

If Tom were open about his heritage, he could do more to protect the castle. _His_ castle. Dumbledore says there may come a time when a second duel is required of him, but it will not be held on castle grounds regardless. At this, Tom feels something like relief. He must protect his birthright.

Perhaps he could hide more wards in the Chamber.

When they depart, it is with a heavy feeling. These people had had barely one decade of peace in five, between Grindelwald and Voldemort. Tom wonders whether now might be an advantageous moment for Voldemort to be resurrected.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hi, thank you for reading! I’m excited to be writing some new Tomarry work. This is a WIP and I haven’t got a publishing schedule, but I finish what I start, so hang around, or come back in a few months, or whatever. Enjoy.
> 
> Professor Riddle is a trope I really love; here’s some fics that will influence how I’m writing him. No particular order, but you should read them all:
> 
> [Reparabilis, by Anonymous](https://archiveofourown.org/works/9146410).
> 
> [Reclamation, by sam_storyteller](https://sam-storyteller.dreamwidth.org/97242.html).
> 
> [Professor Riddle and the Quest for Tenure, by Zalgo Jenkins](https://www.fanfiction.net/s/8706297/1/Professor-Riddle-and-the-Quest-for-Tenure).
> 
> [The Outliers, by Atypical16](https://archiveofourown.org/works/11707455/chapters/26365128).
> 
> [Gilgamesh, by Morgan Steelgrave](https://archiveofourown.org/series/775470).
> 
> And slightly more niche, fics that treat Voldemort as Tom's secret identity:
> 
> [Voldemort, by Nillen](https://archiveofourown.org/works/1488508).
> 
> [Who's Jealous of Who? by WyrmLivvy](https://archiveofourown.org/works/10969329/chapters/24421716).


	2. Chapter 2

After the fourth year class that first Friday morning, Tom looks up from his desk to find Potter, Weasley, and Granger have lingered. “Yes? Professor Snape shall not be pleased if you’re late to his class.” _And I won’t write you a note_ , is the unspoken conclusion.

Potter licks his lips – no wonder they’re chapped, it’s a disgusting habit – and comes out with it too quickly. “How do we fight in a war?”

He wants to laugh in Potter’s face. He doesn’t. “You are fourteen.”

“But to prepare. There’s no wizard military -- ?” He glances back to Weasley to confirm. Weasley nods. “So who fights?”

“There is no standing military. The Aurors are militia-trained. Didn’t I write you a permission slip to take books from the restricted section about the war?”

“Yes, sir.” Potter no longer reacts when Tom snaps at him. Indeed, now there is something flinty and determined in his gaze. Good. “I thought – after so many wars – they might have changed it.”

“We haven’t got the population to sustain a standing military,” Tom says shortly, because he wants these children out of his classroom. “Become Aurors, all of you, if you’d like to die in a war. Professor McGonagall would have the NEWTs requirements.”

At least they understand they are being dismissed. Granger and Weasley scurry toward the door, but Potter stays where he is. “Did you fight in the Dark War, sir?”

It is a rumor that occasionally surfaces among the student body, because on bad days his gait is still uneven; he has never explained the source of old injuries, so people will always be curious. “I was never an Auror, no.”

“But there were others. Like my parents. Civilians. Dumbledore had a lot of them on his side.” ( _His side_. Still, Potter isn’t wrong: more of the war felt like it was fought by Dumbledore than the Ministry proper.) “Did you fight with them?”

“I did not.”

“Then why are you….” He stops himself. “Nevermind. Thank you, sir.” Slinging his bag over a shoulder: “You’re not going to write us a note to be late to Snape’s class, then?” he asks in a charming way.

“ _Professor_ Snape, and no, I am not.”

“Right. Thought not. See you tomorrow.” Granger and Weasley are already hovering in the doorway; Potter follows them out.

 

The entire following week, Tom is consumed by wards, protective spells, arcana. “I don’t recall any of these measures from my own time,” he says as Dumbledore steps up to a braided ward beside him. Grindelwald’s war – the Elder War, as it was often called, for Grindelwald’s rumored unbeatable wand – had never come to Britain, and certainly not to Hogwarts. Tom’s seventh year had been marked by newspapers and anxiety and the Transfiguration class being taught by Minerva quite often, as she’d been in her apprenticeship that year. But there had never been _war_ at Hogwarts.

“We cannot assume Grindelwald’s aims are what they had been last time,” Dumbledore says. “Indeed, the world no longer seems so primed for tyranny.”

They’d see about that.

But Tom offers Dumbledore a bland smile. “The students will be secure behind these wards, anyway. I assume it will be enough to keep the Ministry out?”

“Oh no,” Dumbledore says with inappropriate cheer. “No, I’ve only just bargained them down from a full takeover. Merlin knows they’ve wanted to depose me for ages anyway! But no. The Aurors will arrive within the week.”

“I see.”

Tom has little reason to _fear_ the Aurors, exactly. They will never find his Horcruces, hidden in inaccessible parts of the castle. But he will be just a bit less free to move through Hogwarts as he has learned to. He must inform the basilisk.

Dumbledore sketches a small ward at the end of the braid – one that will board up the windows if anyone attempts to breach them – and then excuses himself. Immediately Tom rips out the ward and draws a superior one, that will cause the windowpanes to fill with unbreakable ice. Better.

He goes to bed that night exhausted – typically he only expends magic meant for children in class, or the sort of household spells that all wizards live by. But the novelty of casting a full day of wards – well, it’s the only explanation for what happens that night.

Tom rarely dreams, but he’s cognizant of them when he does. He’s in some version of the Forbidden Forest, with Hogwarts rising over the silhouetted trees in the distance. He is seeking… something.

A crack of a branch behind him. He hasn’t got his wand – _where is it_? – and he is shifting the pockets of his robes even as he scans the darkness of the forest.

And then a glinting pair of eyes looks back. Red, like his glamour made his own eyes. He wonders if he would come in contact with Voldemort, his proper persona. In this dream world, he can shift the foliage to cover himself, making him invisible as he’s still searching for his bloody wand. The trees shuffle into place, dropping their branches low. The eyes approach.

Into the clearing left by those trees, steps Potter.

He is looking for something too. Is he seeking what Tom had been seeking? Had he been seeking Tom himself? His eyes still glint red, and in other ways his appearance is inverted as well – his full face is thinner, his slouched posture straighter. He looks as though he’s adopted at least a few elements of Voldemort’s glamour.

“I know you’re not dead.”

Potter speaks this into the clearing. He’s pulled out his wand – and Tom is _so_ annoyed that Potter’s got a wand and he hasn’t – and casts nothing more interesting than lumos. He raises it high, but this is Tom’s dream, and so he keeps the light far from his thicket of trees.

“Is this the Forbidden Forest?” Potter is looking around. “You don’t… hide out here, do you? You’ve never attacked Hogwarts….”

Tom still waits, for what Potter _wants_.

“Coward,” Potter mutters. “You ran from the war, you let all your followers get imprisoned instead. What are you waiting for?” He swallows. “My parents… whatever happened to you that night, I’m going to finish it, for them.”

His wandlight recedes. Their magic can’t touch for long before it becomes painful, disorienting to both of them. Tom finds his wand at last in his robes – not that it fucking matters now – and uses it to draw the tree branches apart.

Potter wants revenge. Well. That’s noble.

There is no question that this dreamscape is real, for a certain standard of _real_. Potter had been pawing at Tom’s psyche, typically in sleep, for quite some time now. This was the first instance of his Occlumency giving way to let the boy in. Tom knows it can’t happen again, realistically. But… he is curious what the consequences would be if it did.

 

The day of wards had been on Saturday, so Tom rises on Sunday morning, curious whether any trace of their encounter – as it were – would show on Potter’s face. But he comes in late to breakfast – Tom gathers there had been an early morning Quidditch practice – perfectly cheery and a bit grass-stained. So Tom returns to his book – Dumbledore always clucks that he looks antisocial when he reads at meals, to which Tom must always remind him that his published research brings Hogwarts enough prestige to overlook less-than-social behavior – and lets Potter alone for the rest of the weekend.

Instead, he’s caught up with bureaucracy, because the Aurors have arrived.

He spends his Sunday showing these Aurors the newly-implemented security measures. Flitwick, Babbling, and Dumbledore join them, to study wards and charms against intrusion. Tom grits his teeth as one Auror casually rips from the wall the alarm ward he’d drawn only yesterday.

But Dumbledore’s got a lot of clever words, and all these Aurors had been his students at one point. Gently, he assures them that they do not need to be stationed within the castle, that at present their security is more than adequate. At this, at least, Tom feels momentary gratitude for Albus’s manipulations.

Near the end of the castle walkthrough, the lead Auror frowns. “Do you have safeguards against Dark magic?”

“Pedagogy,” Albus pronounces before the rest of them have an answer. “Our faculty has done an admirable job keeping the allure of Dark magic from students.”

This wasn’t untrue, strictly speaking. Voldemort’s soldiers of the war had learned their Dark magic elsewhere. He taught them himself, when he needed to. The Hogwarts curriculum had always been rather.. bloodless, under Dumbledore, but Tom could see how that was pushing the purebloods deeper into revolt.

The Auror is also unimpressed. “We are putting tracers on the castle. Grindelwald recruited among students last time, he will again.”

“You underestimate the moral caliber of our students,” Dumbledore says.

The Auror shrugs. “Then it shouldn’t be a problem, no?”

Tom is still unconcerned. He has kept two Horcruces in the castle – the diadem in the Room of Lost Things, the diary in the Chamber – as well as Nagini. But the magic of Horcruces is esoteric, and the Aurors are inept. His Horcruces are safe.

The Aurors depart in time for Tom to begin work that afternoon, grading essays on the summer’s reading. (Abysmal work. He wonders how much morale would drop if he cursed the lowest-scoring student of each class blind for one class session. Too much, he decides.) Unfortunately, he is working in the teachers’ lounge, rather than his private quarters – a small concession to keep Albus from _fussing_ at him – and partway through the stack of third year exams, Severus enters the room. “Oh,” he mutters, and turns to go.

“Severus. Really. Be collegial.”

Severus re-enters, taking a seat on the farthest armchair. “Albus wouldn’t divulge what the Aurors said.”

“That the wards are adequate, and they are bringing in trackers of Dark magic regardless.”

Tom and Severus do not have a _good_ relationship precisely, but it has mellowed since the time of Tom’s hiring. Most significantly, they recognize one another as the faculty most interested in the dark arts.

“You will need to inform them of your Dark Mark.”

Severus’s face contorts in quite a lot of emotions, before settling into a scowl. “They are aware.”

“Ah.” He _desperately_ wants to pursue this, to ask whether Severus believes his erstwhile Lord to be dead. In part it would be strategy; more significantly it would be a way to needle the irritable man. He returns to marking, instead.

Severus has his own marking to which to attend, apparently. They work in silence, only the low hum of the forever-warming charm on the teapot filling the room. Then the door opens, and Dumbledore enters, looking tired.

“Excellent,” he says, looking between them. “Tom, would you give us a moment alone?”

This is obnoxious. He could have summoned Severus to his office, or if it were truly dire he could have simply dropped a silencing spell enveloping them both. Tom takes his time in leaving. “Good day,” he says to them both.

“The Aurors will want to speak to you again,” Dumbledore says.

“Will they?”

Dumbledore seems surprised at Tom’s reaction. “Of course. Your contact with practitioners of dark magic makes you valuable. Gellert” ( _Gellert_ , as though they are still lovers. Dumbledore ought to be careful) “recruited among British citizens last time, and he will again.”

“My social circles these days are filled with children and mild-mannered professors. But thank you.”

And then Dumbledore waves Tom out. He hears the door spelled shut behind him.

When he enters his quarters, Nagini opens her mouth wide in displeasure. “ _What_ ,” Tom mutters, dropping his bag on the nearest sofa.

“ _There were wizards_ ,” she says. “ _Outside the door._ ”

“ _Attempting to get in?_ ”

“ _No. They speak of magic._ ”

Studying the protective spells around his quarters, then. He will have to add a few more, should they ever manage to cross the threshold. “ _I wish you could kill intruders_ ,” he says to her, a bit wistful. “ _But being caught with a body in my quarters wouldn’t fare well for either of us._ ”

“ _Perhaps just the cat_?” Nagini asks hopefully.

Tom manages a tired laugh, pushing his hair out of his face, as it’s falling out of its tie by now. “ _Not even the cat_ ,” he says. “ _I will let you go out onto the grounds tonight to hunt._ ”

Nagini settles, a bit like a contented cat. Tom moves to the bedroom to unbutton his robes.

Then, a sensation he hasn’t felt for thirteen years. A pressure in his palm, as though something is being forced into it. He looks down in disbelief.

The magic of the Dark Mark is _his_ magic, embedded in the Knights’ bodies. He had given them a way to summon him as well, should they need to. Generally, they were too intimidated, believing (rightfully) that spurious summons would carry consequences. But this…. He is free to disregard it, the sensation would dissipate. But he is curious.

When he lifts his hand, murmuring a spell in Parselmagic, a ball of smoke coalesces in his palm. Then it becomes a snake, which announces in Parseltongue, “ _Severus Snape. At Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry._ ”

Tom actually laughs in surprise. Severus. He’s quite curious why Albus chose to do this now – because Severus had certainly only summoned him under duress – but no matter.

There is no indication, on the Knights’ part, whether Voldemort received or deigned to acknowledge these summons. He blows the snake away with a puff of breath.

The only Knight to seek him after his apparent death had been Bellatrix. Bellatrix, mad with grief, exorcising it upon the Longbottoms as soon as their Fidelius was lifted. It had been stupid. They should have remained in hiding until all of the Knights had been apprehended. They deserved it.

But news of Voldemort’s _death_ had spread extraordinarily quickly, for a world that still relied primarily on owl post. Some of the Knights went straight to their solicitors, working out alibis or plea deals or bribes. Some went into hiding, or fled overseas. And some had been stupid enough to get themselves thrown in Azkaban.

It wasn’t as though Voldemort didn’t appreciate the latter as a gesture of loyalty. It simply wasn’t _useful_ to him. A dozen of the Knights still rot away in Azkaban to this day. He wonders if any of them have died yet.

Severus should have been in Azkaban. Whatever groveling deal Severus had offered Albus had kept him from prison, yet trapped in a different fashion. Severus hadn’t even gotten Evans out of the deal, in the end.

\---

That same Sunday morning, Harry had awoken too early, his heart in his mouth. _I know you’re not dead_ , he had said – _to_ Voldemort? In Voldemort’s presence? He had known he hadn’t been alone, in his dream.

Truthfully, the moments where he feels the presence of another upon his mind come more frequently, these days. He falls asleep thinking of Voldemort, wondering if their – curse or whatever – still binds them as closely as Dumbledore seems to believe.

He falls asleep wondering if he could actually avenge his parents.

That Sunday, he’s out on the Quidditch pitch early in preparation for their first game next week. And after breakfast, all the students are instructed to clear out, so that Aurors can check the security wards in the Great Hall.

“Huh,” Ron says, watching the red-robed wizards file in, speaking first with Dumbledore and then a few other members of the faculty. “Dumbledore _never_ lets the Ministry in. Dad says they’d sack him if they could, it drives them mad.”

“He doesn’t seem to mind much,” Harry says, watching Dumbledore usher the Aurors ( _Aurors_ , what Professor Riddle said they all should become if they wanted to fight) along the head table, speaking to Babbling and Flitwick. “He doesn’t like the Ministry?”

“Just – the Dark War was a lot closer to here than Grindelwald is. And I think Dumbledore did all the security himself then.”

“Maybe he’s more scared of Grindelwald than he was of… You Know Who,” Harry relents when Ron pre-emptively flinches.

Hermione had been quiet, sucking the end of a quill, because of course she was reading over breakfast. “They dueled before,” she tells Harry, since Ron already knows. “It’s how Grindelwald was defeated. He probably planned the breakout for a day that would – unsettle Dumbledore. Grindelwald wants something.”

“Well, that’s comforting.”

Hermione rolls her eyes at Ron. “I hope our Defense classes become much more practical this year, anyway.”

Harry shifts, glancing up to where Professor Riddle is now speaking to an Auror with wispy brown hair. “We should have a dueling club, for real,” he says. “Riddle said we couldn’t, because – ? It’s not allowed, somehow. But if the Ministry approves it, it’s got to overrule whatever the school board says.” Both of his friends look contemplative but a bit skeptical. “If anything happens… I want to go down fighting.”

Maybe he is paranoid. Maybe Voldemort’s curse had broken his brain so long ago. But he hadn’t been the only one of his classmates who had lost someone in the last war. “I’ll ask him again,” Harry says. “I don’t care if he doesn’t like me. Or if he thinks we’re being – rash, or whatever.”

“Right, mate.” Ron puts his final piece of toast in his mouth. “After class Tuesday?”

“Let’s go to the library,” Hermione says, snapping her book shut.

“You said we would go to the lake today – “

“I need to know more about Grindelwald, and I expect you do, too.” A small smile. “It is strategy.”

Somehow, it makes Harry feel better, to pull books on the Elder War from the shelves. He notes that these shelves are a bit spotty, so they aren’t the only students who have taken an interest in Grindelwald’s war. He also notes that unlike the books on Voldemort, these aren’t barricaded behind the Restricted Section.

 

He does not dream of Voldemort again that night. He doesn’t know whether he wanted to. He thought it might be useful.

DADA on Tuesday is buzzing, as the Aurors in their castle had driven home the gravitas of the circumstances.

When they’re all seated, Professor Riddle charms their stack of essays to separate itself and flutter back into their hands. Their assignments always bleed red with corrections, and this one more than usual. Even Hermione’s is rife with ink.

“Your assignments were disappointing,” Riddle says. “You are halfway through your education – “

“No, we’re not,” Seamus objects behind Harry.

A flick of his wrist, and Riddle’s wand is in his hand. He charms a silencing spell over Seamus without even addressing him. It would wear off before class’s end, if he didn’t lift it himself, but still. Harry hears Dean snicker. “You are halfway through your education, yet some of you do not yet know the difference between a hex and a jinx. This isn’t merely _trivia_. It has a material effect on your spellcasting. As we will explore today. Wands out.”

Oh thank Merlin. Riddle arranges them in pairs, so when Harry’s standing across from Justin Finch-Fletchley, he only wishes it were Ron, as they’d gotten good at dueling cooperatively. Instead Ron’s beside him, sizing up Dean. And then Riddle diagrams the hex (“Hex, not a jinx,” he hisses as he puts up a diagram of the wand motion. “If it were a jinx your wand would go like _this_.”) and they spread out to practice.

Riddle stalks the classroom, watching and correcting them. He stands behind Harry for awhile, then steps in. “Stop moving your elbow like that,” he says at last.

“Like what?”

“Swinging it outward. Keep it close to your ribs, or you’re giving your opponent a target in your torso. Cast it again.”

He casts the hex. Again. Riddle, swallowing irritation, steps in. “ _Again_.”

And as Harry casts, Riddle pushes his elbow closer to his body – and then, there’s a jolt of pain right where Riddle has touched. “Hey -- !” Harry jerks away, making his spell go wide and crack a portrait frame on the far side of the classroom.

Riddle stares at him for a moment, his dark eyes unreadable. “I apologize,” he says, and steps away.

What the _fuck_.

Harry is so unnerved by this that he doesn’t stay after class like he’d planned to, to ask once again about dueling. He can’t tell Ron and Hermione what happened until lunchtime: leaning over cauldrons of chowder, he’s telling them in a low tone, “So he takes my elbow and I – felt magic? He didn’t even have a wand out. It sort of hurt, like getting singed.” He’d already examined his arm – no marks, no lasting damage. Still.

“If he thinks he can punish you with magic – “ Hermione begins hotly.

Harry shakes his head. “He was surprised too, I think. Like – an accident.” Like Aunt Marge, who’d gotten inflated and had to be fetched from the neighborhood treetops a year ago. But Harry had been _furious_ then. Could Riddle really hate him that much?

“Sort of strange, accidental magic for adults,” Ron muses. “But then, so is wandless magic, if he’d done it on purpose.”

“Whatever,” Harry says, ripping open a bread roll too fiercely. “Let him hate me. He’s not the only one, anyway. We can do this alone.”

Ron and Hermione exchange looks. “Alright,” Hermione agrees. “We’ll take some books on defensive magic from the library – “

“I want to duel.” He knows he is being a stereotype, that Riddle has said before that Gryffindors only learn offensive magic without its defensive counterpart. “The book he gave me – _The Duelist’s Companion_? The library must also have a copy.”

“Professor McGonagall will give us all loads of detentions if she catches us,” Hermione says.

Harry jostles her elbow, playful. “Detention really isn’t so bad. It’ll harden you up.” And then Hermione is laughing in spite of herself.

 

Within a few weeks of Harry’s fourth year, the school has settled into its routine. “God, let Grindelwald attack before Runes, I didn’t prepare for that exam…” could be heard at the breakfast table. And Fred and George, now developing an impressive line of mischief, were demoing Grindelwald masks that distorted the wearer’s voice into a thick and slightly hysterical Hungarian accent. They also sold recreations of the Elder Wand, with its distinctive beads down the length. Only _these_ beads pulsated, and while Fred and George couldn’t say it was a sex toy… it was a sex toy. So. Tensions had largely eased by October.

_Largely_ , because Snape was more miserable than ever. He had always hated Harry, but now the entire Gryffindor house is especially prone to his ire. It’s only October and they already know they’re not winning the house cup – which has really had a liberating, nihilistic effect on them, so they’re probably more poorly behaved in Potions than they would be otherwise.

“Bastard,” Ron breathes as they leave class one afternoon, as he, Harry, and Neville had all been assigned the task of scrubbing down the owlery, for “ _gross incuriosity_ ,” whatever that means. “I think he’s trying to do us in, honestly. Finish what You Know Who started.”

Harry looks up, startled. “He’s not – I know the Knights were Slytherins, but Dumbledore wouldn’t let him – “

“Yes, he would,” Hermione says grimly. “The court records are sealed, but Snape got arrested after You Know Who’s death. Dumbledore testified for him.”

Harry more-or-less trusts Dumbledore, but the man seemed to have an optimist’s streak, that really was dodgy. He’d been optimistic in assuming the Dursleys would treat Harry well, and Harry suspects he’s been too optimistic about Snape’s loyalties too.

God, a Knight of Walpurgis – former Knight – whatever, in the castle, trapped now in the inanities of teaching children. It would be funny if it weren’t dangerous.

 

Their detention is scheduled for a gloomy Saturday morning, so they eat breakfast quickly as a storm splashes at the windowpanes. And just as the four of them are moving to go – because Neville’s got detention too, and Hermione doesn’t but she says she will keep them company – McGonagall strides up the Great Hall. “Potter. Longbottom. Good. You are needed in the Headmaster’s office.”

“Uh – but we’ve got detention now,” Harry says.

Her mouth narrows in displeasure. “With whom?”

“Professor Snape.”

“Severus can wait,” she pronounces. “Come with me.”

Hopelessly, Harry shrugs in Ron and Hermione’s direction. They follow.

When McGonagall lets them in, it’s clear they are interrupting a quite serious conversation. Dumbledore rises, as do two Aurors. One is a Black man, with broad shoulders and a gold hoop in his ear. The other is the most _battered_ human Harry has ever seen: his face is a mass of scars, one leg is a clanking wood and metal prosthetic, and a bright blue fake eye swivels in its socket.

“Come in, take a seat. This is Auror Alastor Moody,” Dumbledore says as Harry shakes Moody’s gnarled hand, “and Auror Kingsley Shacklebolt,” and Kingsley’s warm clasp. They all sit around a low table, with an untouched tea setting in its center.

The Aurors and Dumbledore negotiate something with a look; Dumbledore starts. “Thank you both for joining us. I’ve received some news that will affect all the student body, but you two in particular. There was another prison breakout, we believe by the same operatives. But this one took place at Azkaban. The British wizards’ prison,” he adds, clearly for Harry’s benefit since Neville had grown up knowing these things.

“Two breakouts in two months,” Auror Moody grunts. “World’s going to hell.”

Nobody challenges this or finds it scandalous, so neither does Harry. “So – Voldemort’s men,” (this gets him an appraising look from both Aurors) “are out, then?”

“Indeed,” Dumbledore says. “And not only men.” He looks to Neville. “I am quite sorry to tell you that among the escapees was Bellatrix Lestrange.”

Neville exhales through his teeth. “Oh.”

It’s difficult for Harry not to cast a questioning look at Neville, who’s a lovely if scattered person and not the sort he’d expect to have an _enemy_. But he can’t dwell on it, because Dumbledore turns to him. “And for your safety, Harry – of course the Knights may bear you ill will for Voldemort’s apparent demise. But in particular, there were reports that a prisoner named Sirius Black, who was instrumental in Voldemort’s attack on your parents, has been particularly agitated since the summer. He seemed determined to reach Hogwarts, for revenge against someone.”

Sirius Black. “Right,” Harry says. “Then I’ll be ready for him.”

“You will _not_ ,” McGonagall says sharply.

“Forgive me, Minerva.” Dumbledore does sound truly apologetic. “But he will. In a manner of speaking. How are each of you in Defense?” They both dither. “Good marks?”

“Good enough.” “… Yes?”

“Excellent,” Dumbledore says, undeterred by their hesitation. “As you are both – shall we say – high risk, some additional training in defensive magic would not be wasted on you.”

“But Professor Riddle doesn’t like me.” Neville mutters this behind his fist, almost as though speaking to himself. But then the entire room is looking at him, and he goes scarlet.

“Tom,” Dumbledore says in a sigh, “has developed a particular pedagogy. He is not the loving or nurturing sort, but I’ve been satisfied with the caliber of students he produces. I’m quite sure he finds you acceptable,” he tells Neville gently. “But actually, this will not be his work. It will be Auror Moody’s.”

Harry had been sort of avoiding the strange blue gaze peering through Moody’s long hair. And Moody is now looking back at Dumbledore: “ _Have_ you looked into Riddle?” he asks. “We used to subpoena his client lists all the time, I can’t believe he’d leave that life behind him entirely – “

“Who is he?” Shacklebolt shot a questioning look in Moody’s direction. “I don’t recognize the name.”

“Before your time. He owned a shop on Knockturn Alley.” (Harry sees that this gets a reaction out of Neville – later he’ll ask why.) “Every Knight passed through at some point. I wouldn’t be surprised if he were some sort of – propagandist.”

“Alastor, please,” Dumbledore says mildly. “You insult my hiring decisions. His interest in dark arts, for as long as I’ve known him, has been merely academic. It would do him well to have _more_ contact with the outside world, honestly, but I assure you he is not fomenting any rebellion. And clearly, Harry sits alive and well before us. He has spoken highly of you,” he adds to Harry.

_Had_ he? Harry finds this hard to believe. Riddle’s range of emotions around Harry only go from disappointment to irritation. And whatever that – accidental magic or whatever – had been. “Yes, sir,” is all he can think to say.

“Really, in some ways, this springs from your own initiative. You had asked him why Hogwarts does not have a dueling club?”

“Oh – yes. Awhile ago.” Riddle had acted as though it had been a _secret_ then, so Harry’s bewildered and a little annoyed now.

Dumbledore nods. “We really ought to,” he says. “Unfortunately, the board is desperately opposed to the idea.”

“Why? – Sir,” Harry amends.

“A few members believe the practice is barbaric. Quite a few more believe I would raise child soldiers, if I could.” When Harry makes a skeptical noise, Dumbledore lifts a shoulder as though in concession. “Your parents fought immediately out of school. So did many of their generation.”

“On both sides,” Moody mutters darkly.

“Indeed. There wasn’t time to train them as Aurors properly. This… perhaps you find the age of twenty-one to be old, but your parents died _hideously_ young, really. But all this is to say – would you keep your lessons quiet? Not everyone would be pleased to hear about them.”

“Yes, sir.” – “Yes, sir,” Neville echoes.

“Excellent. Alastor will owl you both, within the week.”

After this, they see themselves out – the Aurors through Dumbledore’s floo, McGonagall accompanying Harry and Neville down the staircase. “I will bring you to Professor Snape’s detention,” she says, taking them in the direction of the owlery.

And it’s a good thing she does, really – Snape is there, looking livid, as Ron squeezes liquid soap into dull wooden buckets. Hermione is sitting, a bit hunched, on a windowsill. “At last,” Snape intones, his gaze burning through Harry’s forehead.

“The Headmaster needed them,” McGonagall says calmly. “You understand.”

“Because Black has nothing better to do than antagonize a schoolboy.”

So Snape knows of the breakout. Is that why he’s more miserable than usual? The Knights must hate him, as the one who evaded prison. Harry thinks this as he take a sponge from Ron.

McGonagall’s mouth is very tight as she answers Snape: “Alastor Moody seemed to think so.”

At this, Snape makes a noise of disgust, but he does not refute it. He and McGonagall leave together.

And as soon as the door is closed, Ron and Hermione look to Harry, wide-eyed. “You met Mad Eye Moody?” Ron asks in awe.

“… Yes?”

“What was he like? Was he terrifying?”

“Um. Not really?” Harry hedges. “Ron, who is he?”

“Head of the Aurors, been doing it for decades. Dad likes him, but he says every time Moody trains the new recruits, they wander around the Ministry looking shellshocked for a few days.”

“Oh.” Harry looks to Neville. “Have you heard of him, too?”

Neville’s gripping a sponge tightly. “I’d heard of him. I didn’t know he was like – that.”

Hermione is frowning. “Are you in trouble?” she asks, looking between them.

“No. Well.” Harry and Neville exchange a glance – god, it’s weird to have Neville as a confidant now – and then Harry decides Ron and Hermione are trustworthy. “Look, it’s got to be a secret – I guess you’ll hear about the prison outbreak soon enough – “

He recounts it all as they scrub down the floors, with Hermione vanishing feathers and owl pellets as they go. “So we’ll get extra training – oh, Dumbledore said we can’t have a dueling club because people are scared he’ll raise child soldiers, by the way – “

“ _What_?”

“Yeah. And Snape was furious at the breakout, and so was Moody, and now – one more person wants me dead,” Harry concludes with a dry laugh.

“Harry, don’t talk like that,” Hermione moans. “And you, Neville?”

Neville forces a smile across his face. “Guess one more person wants me dead, too.”

“Oh god, that’s not what I meant – “

Neville smiles at her, a real one now, to indicate he’s joking. “Ah, one of the prisoners – killed my parents. That’s all.”

“I’m so sorry – “ “Neville – “

“It’s fine, it’s fine,” he waves off their sad noises. “Just – it will be good to learn more defense. If anything happens.”

“Nothing’s going to happen,” Ron says resolutely. “We’ll sleep in shifts, if we’ve got to.”

“Please don’t,” Neville says.

And Harry is quietly feeling stupid, because – he’d never really wondered where Neville’s parents were. Neville had been just as orphaned by the war as Harry had been, but nobody in the wizarding world thought _he_ was a hero. It’s all so unfair, to them both. It’s not like Harry himself had done anything except survive.

\---

Tom is alone on that Saturday morning, sequestered in his suite with the new _Ethics of Magick_ journal. (A joke of academic inquiry, but his interest makes him appear clever and interdisciplinary.) There’s a knock on his door. If he could have gotten away with pretending to be out, he would have. Instead he squeezes his eyes shut momentarily, then spells the door open.

Albus stands in his doorway, his grave demeanor and hideous lilac robes at odds. “There has been news.”

“Come in.” Tom does not rise from his desk, only turns his chair. At his feet, Nagini lifts her head and then drops it again, as though underwhelmed by the company.

Albus shuts the door, strides in, takes a seat on the sofa across from him. He disregards Nagini, and she him. “Another prison breakout,” he says heavily. “Azkaban, this time.”

Tom ensures his expression does not shift. “Who escaped, in particular?”

“The Lestrange family. Flint. Yaxley. Black.”

Black. Pettigrew’s deception was brilliant, and may actually be useful to Voldemort if he knew where Pettigrew had then fled to. “Released by Grindelwald’s followers?”

“We don’t yet know. I assume so.”

What does Grindelwald want with the Knights of Walpurgis, the ones who hadn’t been clever enough to stay out of prison? In any case, until Tom had a use for them himself, they weren’t his problem. “I see.”

Dumbledore clasps his hands before him. Always a bad sign. “Tom.” A worse sign. “I will not ask of your involvement in the last war – “

“You may. You’d find the answer quite boring.”

“I’m glad of it. But I came to warn you in case you had any unfinished business with the Knights – literal or otherwise – that may affect you now.”

“I do not. But thank you.”

“I have also enlisted the tutelage of Alastor Moody, to further instruct Harry Potter and Neville Longbottom in defensive magic.”

Tom’s mind stutters. He is not meant to know of the prophecy. Potter, of course, but – “Longbottom, sir?”

“Bellatrix Lestrange is unusually vicious. I don’t believe Neville is fully out of her gaze, even now. And of course, it will benefit his self-esteem.”

“Ah.”

He does not ask why Dumbledore didn’t burden _him_ with additional instruction. Most importantly, he wouldn’t have wanted it. But Dumbledore also has never fully trusted him, not even more than a decade into his appointment. They have both… settled into this understanding, regardless.

There’s a trill from the inner folds of Dumbledore’s robes then; he lifts a phoenix-shaped pocket watch and sighs. “Forgive me, I am needed elsewhere,” he says, as though Tom had invited him to stay. “But Tom – be careful.”

“And you.” Rising, he walks Dumbledore out.

It is a mere ten minutes later that the Dark Mark’s summoning spell tugs at him. He opens his palm. “Severus Snape, Hogwarts – “ the smoke snake pronounces before Tom vanishes it again. Severus must be livid at Dumbledore’s continuing coercion, and _that_ cheers Tom, at least. But he wonders if he will find the Lestranges, Yaxley, Flint – hell, even Pettigrew, wherever he scurried off to – before they are able to find him.

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> idk that I'm writing Harry as actually smarter than he is in canon, I'm just writing him as more proactive and curious about, you know, the world, the war, the people trying to kill him. So if he seems more eager to learn than he was in the books, that's because he damn well should have been. Not sorry.
> 
> And Voldemort is going to have the chance to do some more Voldemort-ish things soon, with the Death Eaters/Knights of Walpurgis out of Azkaban.
> 
> And also their relationship is just going to get complicated soon. I've held off while Harry is still young, but -- there will be more than just awkward irritation in their interactions in the future.
> 
> Thanks for reading!


	3. Chapter 3

_November 1994._ The Knights are quiet in those first few weeks after the breakout. The school is tensed on Halloween – a night of magic and mischief, the anniversary of Voldemort’s death. But the day passes in quiet.

Still, the castle is not unaffected. Aurors visit more often than Tom had ever seen before. It takes him a bit of observation to come to the conclusion that they are foremost watching _Dumbledore,_ who has never really been innocent of his alliance with Grindelwald. The idea that the Ministry suspects Dumbledore of being a double agent for Gellert… Tom is quite pleased with it. And it keeps their attention off Tom himself. He ought to be grateful.

Dumbledore, for his own part, moves through the castle with a sort of heaviness these days.

It happens on a miserable, sleeting night in November. Severus had attempted to summon Voldemort at least once a week. And once, Bellatrix, probably high on the prison escape. The charm had directed him to a spot in the Swiss alps, which is very interesting but Tom did not follow it.

Beyond that – the Knights of Walpurgis must assume he is dead. Perhaps they _hope_ he is dead. He will, after all, punish their indiscretion at being caught to begin with.

But tonight, somewhere past one in the morning, Tom is reading at his desk in preparation for tomorrow’s classes when the summoning spell surges up his forearm. And there is a _force_ behind it that he has not experienced before, a sort of desperation. He opens his palm and the snake lifts itself from smoke. “ _Bartemius Crouch_ ,” it says in Parseltongue. “ _The Crouch home in Amesbury._ ”

_Crouch_. Crouch had died, or so he had heard, in a freezing prison cell in 1986. His parents had not even gone to retrieve their son’s body. Soon after, Caroline Crouch, already made a shut-in by grief and poor health, had died herself. Barty Crouch, Sr. had lived alone in that house since. And now… his dead son is summoning Voldemort there.

Tom has not yet attempted to apparate out of Slytherin’s chamber. He had studied the wards – or lack thereof, that deep into the earth. He knows it is hypothetically possible. Still, he will take a healing potion in his robes, in case he is splinched and stranded. Rising, he summons his cloak and boots.

Before leaving, he opens a small chest tucked at the lowest shelf of his bookcase. He always kept Polyjuice at hand, as well as a few stray hairs collected in public. (Really, nobody was _nearly_  concerned enough about guarding against impersonation.) He shouldn’t have to bother with such measures, but Mad Eye Moody would be able to see through his glamour alone, should he be there.

One day, he should thank Moody, for making his security proportionately better in response.

A vial of Polyjuice and a glass tube containing a dark hair. He will consume them immediately before apparating.

The castle is silent, the wretched ghost is absent, Slytherin’s chamber opens for him as though welcoming him home. He descends, charming the stones to assemble into a staircase before him.

Upon reaching the lowest part of the chamber, he detaches his _lumos_ into a sphere above him. Polyjuice. He becomes a woman a bit younger than himself – a _woman_ , this is new, but apart from charming his clothing to fit this body a bit better, he doesn’t fuss with it – and then casts his mask-like glamour atop it. Raising his wand, he apparates.

And when he lands neatly at the edge of a garden in Amesbury, a flush of success goes through him. Of course he may apparate undetected from Hogwarts. It is _his_ castle, Dumbledore’s restrictions or no. He strides up the muddy grounds.

The Knights are here. So are the Aurors. Voldemort drops an invisibility spell over himself as he enters the home, the door already broken down by Aurors’ spells. Inside there is shouting and spellcasting and sounds of destruction. He moves through the scene with no particular hurry, merely curiosity.

In a tearoom, Xerxes Flint is bleeding from a gash across his chest as he desperately fights off two Aurors. Wilkes is running in – Macnair and Nott behind him – and suddenly, outnumbered, the Aurors apparate out. Macnair swears loudly and they’re moving to run to an upper floor. Voldemort follows.

He finds himself _nostalgic_. The Knights had followed him out of strategy rather than loyalty, typically, so he’s quite curious what drives their bloodlust tonight.

On the upper floor, he finds it. The elderly Crouch and three Aurors duel Rodolphus and Rabastan Lestrange, while Rookwood and Bellatrix are casting dismantling spells on – a _cage_ , made of sparking wards. Within it, Barty Crouch, Jr writhes, fighting off curses thick and vicious enough to make the air stink. “Fa – Father,” he growls.

The Imperius, Voldemort can see in his gaze the long, chilling effects of it, and it all comes together.

He throws off his invisibility spell.

Barty recognizes him first, and grabs the bars of his cage even as they sear his flesh. “My Lord,” he says, still in that growl of his unused voice.

They all whip around, Knights and Aurors alike. And without acknowledging the reception, Voldemort raises his wand. The Aurors only just get their own up in time, deflecting the strangulation curses. He steps deeper into the room: one Auror is hit by his blood-boiling curse, and then staggers into Bella’s _reducto_. His body hits the floor hard.

Crouch Sr. is gripping the back of an armchair as though he’d faint. “You ruined my family,” he can barely force the words from his lips.

Voldemort looks to his son, wild and broken. “ _You_ ruined your family,” he says curtly, and then fires a killing curse neatly into the man’s heart. Crouch slumps forward, over the back of the armchair.

The Aurors have summoned assistance. They will be outnumbered in a moment; Voldemort can already hear the thunderous footsteps on the stairs. “Release Barty to me,” he says to the nearest Auror, “and I will not kill you.”

The Auror is a woman he recognizes from the war, though her face is much more heavily lined now. “Monster,” she hisses, even as she deflects Bella’s curses, returning her own.

“Quite.” He is blasting another Auror out of the way, throwing him up against the far wall. Crouch Sr. must have cast his son’s cage himself – disgusting – because in his death its force is weakening. Voldemort blasts the bars apart and Barty crawls out, face shining even if he can’t form words.

And then Bella hits the wall, bleeding profusely from her mouth, and Rookwood casts a severing charm that takes the offending Auror’s hand clean off. They need to get out.

There is one more Auror between Voldemort and Barty; Voldemort casts a severing charm at the back of his knees and plucks his wand from his hand as he falls. “Hold still,” he murmurs to Barty, as he encircles his waist in one arm. Lifting the Auror’s wand instead of his own, they apparate.

He only regrets not having time to leave a Dark Mark over the house as he goes. Hopefully Bella will see to it.

They land in a clearing Voldemort has brought the Knights to before, in a remote part of Wales. Barty is in shock, laughing and crying by turns. Voldemort lets him down gently onto a conjured bench. “Give me your arm.”

Barty looks up at him blankly, then realizes, proffering his left forearm. “I thought – I thought – “ He gazes down at his Dark Mark, from which he’d summoned Voldemort not an hour ago.

“Shh,” Voldemort chides, and presses a finger to the mark.

His Knights will convene here, the ones who make it out of the Crouch estate alive. And the others, the ones not on this reconnaissance? Voldemort wonders how Snape, safe in his quarters at Hogwarts, will take this summons. He did not receive every summons, only to the meetings Voldemort wishes Dumbledore to know of. And this one, he should know of.

Minutes later, the cracks of apparition. The Knights arrive one and two at a time, approaching cautiously as though they did not fully believe Voldemort’s presence.

Bellatrix is, of course, the first to kneel. Touching the hem of his robes with reverence, she breathes, “My Lord, you live….”

He is not watching her, but the rest of them, the gaps in the circle of Knights coalescing around him. Karkaroff is missing; Avery; Travers. And another…. “Where is Rodolphus?”

Bellatrix lifts her dark eyes, sets her jaw. “Dead, my Lord. We had to leave his body to heed your call….”

“Oh Bella, I am sorry.”

“No!” She seems fully startled, unnerved to hear him say such things. “No, his death was glorious.” When Voldemort offers her a hand up, she takes it, curling her fingers into his palm in the way her mother must have taught her. “An Auror was injured in the explosion as well. The estate still burned as we apparated.”

This, at least, is useful. Less evidence left behind in the ashes.

He conjures a table, benches, chairs. Several of them are injured, and it’s obviously a relief when he gestures them seated. He keeps Barty to one side of him, Bella the other. “My true friends,” he says, laying a hand on the chair at the head of the table. “I am so gratified to see – _most_ of you – return.”

There is some squirming at this. They are all tallying up the group, too. Though they still wear their bone-white masks, and though they never know the full membership, everyone knows that the absent Knights will be punished. Good.

He keeps his voice low, somber. “Yet I assume some of you are – disappointed? That I am not dead, that you may not sink back into the normalcy of Muggle-loving society. Those of you who pled Imperius and extortion, who renounced me so readily….” He allows his gaze to pass over the table again; there is more squirming. “Consider your loyalty very much in question.”

“My Lord, forgive me!” Goyle practically launches himself from his chair, half-kneeling and half-crawling before him. “My boy, I had to protect my son….” He’s pressing his mouth to Voldemort’s boots, even as he’s shaking so badly that he nearly misses.

Voldemort toes him away. “Up, servant.” He must be careful not to use their names, the ones who cannot be publicly affiliated with him, lest there’s an informant. “You will prove your worth when I ask you to.”

“Y-yes, my Lord. You are gracious – “

A harder kick this time, and Goyle crawls away. Only an idiot would think he wanted to be interrupted with such histrionics.

“None of you ever summoned me,” he continues. “I have told you, dear friends, that I am above death, yet you assumed I would perish so easily. That is, apart from Bellatrix,” he places a hand on her shoulder, she beams at him. “And Bartemius.” A hand on his. Predictably, he flinches. “Now,” Voldemort says, sinking into the grand chair before him, “what were your intentions tonight?”

Bella speaks primarily, but it was Rookwood’s initiative: he had approached Rodolphus and Rabastan with a rumor from his Ministry post, that the nasty hypocrite Bartemius Crouch Sr. had Imperiused and imprisoned his son. The ones who had escaped prison were restless, radicalized from their time isolated from the rest of the world. And Barty was smart, focused, an intellectual for the younger generation. They had wanted him back.

And as Rookwood draws breath – _crack_! Apparition.

Everyone around the table draws their wands, ready for another skirmish, but Voldemort can already tell who approaches, by the way the Dark Mark’s magic beckons. “Severus,” he says, just as Snape approaches from behind a thicket. “You know better than to creep up on such a – paranoid assembly. You should’ve been shot.” And he notes that some Knights still have their wands drawn, and they glower at Snape from behind their masks. He is not wearing one himself, one of the few who may attend openly, because Dumbledore’s protection serves him well.

He offers Voldemort a deep bow, but he does not kneel or crawl or grovel. “My Lord.” He sinks into his empty seat, and Voldemort quietly marvels at the difference between Snape’s prickly awkwardness at Hogwarts and his apparent confidence now.

“Hogwarts has served you well all these years?” Voldemort asks, even as he feels the apprehensive gazes of the other Knights, waiting for him to Crucio Severus. And perhaps he will, he hasn’t decided yet, but it will not be now.

“Yes, my Lord.” Severus folds his hands, fine but for the shining scars of potions knives, before him. And Voldemort motions for Rookwood to continue his recounting.

They had been broken out by a group sympathetic to Grindelwald. What Grindelwald or his followers want of the Knights is a compelling question, but one that will not be answered tonight. Voldemort listens with his hands steepled, quiet and thoughtful.

“And… my Lord, we never lost faith in your return,” Rookwood concludes awkwardly, inclining his head.

“Do not lie to me, servant.” Before Rookwood can apologize further, Voldemort lifts his wand. _Crucio_ – one, two, three, four, five seconds as Rookwood gasps and writhes, gripping the arms of his chair. He is released, drawing ragged breath.

And there’s a certain – _relief_ around the table. They had all been anticipating the first Cruciatus.

Funny.

He lowers his wand. They wait. He is _powerful_ again, not the miserable antisocial schoolteacher he had been performing these past years. “This world devolves further every day, in the hands of the Mudblood lovers,” he says slowly. “We deserve better. We deserve not to live in the shadows any longer. Fudge is nothing without Dumbledore, so – we will leave Fudge in place until we may install one of our own. But Dumbledore’s influence must be destroyed. And so does that of his _pet_ , Harry Potter.”

Bellatrix had hissed her displeasure at Dumbledore’s name; she nearly stands from her chair in righteous indignation at hearing Potter’s. “My Lord, he is a child, we will handle him – “

“Not yet,” Voldemort says silkily, beckoning her to sink into her seat again. “Find where Potter spends his holidays. Do not harm him. Do not make yourselves known at all.”

“Yes, my Lord,” Bella says before anyone else is able to.

“Sow doubt in Fudge’s regime. He is a peacetime politician, he will crumble at the first sign of distress.”

“My Lord,” Macnair murmurs. He holds no power within the Ministry, but at least he is inside. He could be made valuable.

“And destroy the public’s confidence in Dumbledore. Not you, Severus,” Voldemort says when Snape attempts to speak. “You must remain _loyal_ to him, after all.” (A jeer from Bellatrix. They are going to kill each other, someday.)

“I will take care of it, my Lord,” Alecto Carrow says, her eyes shining bright behind her mask.

“See that you do.” He rises, and they all scramble to follow. “And somebody must take Barty home.” He uses his own wand to break all the Auror’s spells on the stolen one, before handing it to Crouch. “Do be good for your host, Barty.”

His mouth works for a moment. “Yes. I will.”

The Knights leave one at a time, each dropping before him to kiss his robes before Apparating. “Stay,” Voldemort murmurs when Dolohov approaches, then Rookwood. They each drop back.

Severus lingers as well. Severus fancies himself a _spy_ , rather than the pawn, perfectly situated between Voldemort and Dumbledore, that he truly is. Voldemort will keep him around only as long as he is useful. He will enjoy watching Severus struggle to serve two masters, in any case.

Dolohov first. Dropping a silencing spell over them: “You must kill Igor Karkaroff. Find him at Durmstrang, before he flees.”

“Yes, my Lord.”

Then Rookwood: “I need a prophecy.”

Rookwood works as an Unspeakable, in matters of love, and isn’t that funny. Nevertheless, he can get nearer to the hall of prophecies than any of the other people at Voldemort’s disposal. So his heavy brow furrows. “Indeed, my Lord?”

“There is a prophecy about myself and Potter. Bring it to me.”

Curiosity, morbid curiosity. “The one from… before?”

“Yes. Is there another?” Voldemort asks, needled.

Rookwood shakes his head. “Of course, my Lord. I will bring it to you.”

“Good. Go.”

And then he and Severus are alone in this clearing. Severus still sits at his place at the table, waiting Voldemort takes his own seat.

“I apologize, my Lord,” Severus says, before Voldemort can say anything. “Dumbledore needed to speak to me. He said to tell you,” he licks his lips, hesitating on the words, “that he will see you in battle himself. That he would not see another young generation killed for old wars.”

How noble of him. Voldemort does not even disagree, properly – they must populate the world with better wizards, before they make themselves extinct. “There will be no need to kill his pupils if he does not turn them into a military. Their fate lies in his hands.”

“Yes, my Lord.”

Severus does not kiss his robes. Voldemort offers his ring, which he brings to his mouth gently. Then he moves to apparate.

“Severus?” Snape turns to look at him. “Give him my best.”

“Yes, my Lord.” _Crack_ , and he is gone.

 

When Tom himself returns to the Hogwarts via the chamber, he must light his fireplace immediately upon returning to his rooms. He drops the wand in.

Of course that had not been _his_ wand. His own yew wand would be a liability, should it be recognized. But he comes across quite a few spare wands in his time, from defeated opponents or the Room of Lost Things. He has incinerated each of them after a battle. It’s the safest way.

His own yew wand, he uses to spell his robes and boots clean. The Polyjuice has long worn off, and he scrubs his face in his hands to rid himself of the sticky impression the glamours would leave.

He still needs to prepare for tomorrow’s classes.

\---

“Potter, Longbottom. You’re coming with me today.”

Mad Eye Moody had clanked up the Great Hall at breakfast, earning the stares of every student he passed. Unabashedly he’d stare back, scrutinizing their schoolbags with his magical eye. And now he’s standing before the Gryffindor table, where Harry and Neville are eating porridge and Seamus is trying not to look at Moody openly.

Harry swallows porridge. “Alright. But we’ve got class….”

“Nevermind class. With who?”

“Professor McGonagall first. And then Professor Riddle – “

Moody is already clanking off, intent on talking to both of them at the head table.

“I wouldn’t mind missing Transfiguration,” Neville says, shoving an orange into his bag. “I know the chickens aren’t real, but they always look so desperate to not exist anymore by the end of class.”

Harry, too, wouldn’t much miss turning feather dusters to chickens. He watches Moody talk to Riddle. Neither of them seem happy about it. Harry remembers faintly that Moody didn’t trust Riddle, for his previous associations with Dark Arts. And when Moody moves to speak with Snape next, Harry wonders if _that_ relationship is any less fraught.

Ron and Hermione get to breakfast just as Harry is taking up his bookbag. “Ah, we’re,” he gestures to Neville, “not going to be in Transfiguration. Tell me if I miss anything good?”

“The feather duster chickens _are_ good,” Ron says. “Mad Eye, then?”

“Yeah.”

“Huh,” he says, looking to where Harry has nodded, where Moody and Snape are _still_ talking. “Wonder what’s brought him here.”

“Nothing good, I imagine.”

 

It is not good. The three of them take the smallest empty classroom in the dungeon – Harry expects it’s because it’s got one door and no windows – and Mad Eye looks them both over grimly as they enter. “You’ll see it in tomorrow’s papers,” he says. “An embarrassment to the Prophet, that they didn’t get it out today. Voldemort attacked.”

Neville grabs the back of the nearest chair, sinking into it. “Who?”

“Crouch.” Moody is extracting a number of spindly instruments from his cloak, dropping them on the front desk. “Apparently he’d kept his kid locked up there. The one who supposedly died in Azkaban years ago, after being convicted of association with the Knights.”

“God,” Neville mutters behind his hand.

“I’m not gonna mince words. Potter, if he doesn’t want you dead now, he will soon.”

Harry shrugs. Not like this is a surprise. “What’m I supposed to do about it, then?”

“This.” And Harry barely sees Moody reach for his wand before he’s struck with a stinging hex in his chest. He hisses, gets his wand up, but Moody’s already made his point. “That’s how long it’d take for him to kill you. _Constant vigilance_ , is what you need. Where’s your Quidditch reflexes?”

Harry’s rubbing the spot on his chest. It hadn’t been a _severe_ hex, really about as mild as he’d ever expect Moody to make it, but it’s still embarrassing. “If he can kill me in a split second, then there’s no point in this, is there?”

“ _Wrong_.” Moody casts another hex; Harry’s Protego barely deflects it. “You both need evasion. Got a broom, Longbottom?”

Neville shudders. “No. I’m pants at flying.”

“Don’t let anyone tell you what you’re bad at,” Moody says severely. “I couldn’t get dispensation for either of you to learn Apparition this young, as the _Minister_ ,” (he says this with a bitter sigh) “is in denial about the whole thing. For now, you ought to carry brooms – they can be shrunk down the size of your wand,” he says at Harry’s frown. “And I’ll see about getting you portkeys. But getting out is more important than fighting. Don’t be too proud to do it. But for now, what I’ll teach you will buy you a few seconds.”

So they drill on Protego first and stunning spells second. Moody says blindness and vertigo would be useful curses for next time. And when Neville’s Protego sputters out one time too many, Moody grunts and fishes a spare wand from his cloak. “Take this. And get yourself your own wand over the holidays.”

Neville doesn’t take it. “This was my dad’s.”

Moody’s face softens, somehow, around the scar tissue. “And it served him well. But you’re going to get yourself killed if you’re using a wand that doesn’t fit you, on principle.”

Neville takes the proffered wand. His next Protego is more solid than Harry’s. And instead of being pleased, all he says is, “Gran is going to kill me.”

“She’s not. I need to write her anyway.” At Neville’s look, Moody waves him off. “Not about you, lad. The Ministry hasn’t confirmed this independently, but – supposedly Rodolphus Lestrange was killed last night.”

Neville takes this in. “Good,” he says. And his spellcasting gets markedly better after that, landing a few hexes on Harry that he completely earned.

They break before lunch. Without decorum Moody says, “Potter, go. Longbottom, stay.”

“Yes, sir.” Harry slings his bag over his shoulder; Neville gives him a tiny wave as he goes.

 

Everyone is filing into the Great Hall as Harry ascends the corridor from the dungeons, and then somehow he ends up in step with Professor Riddle. “Hi, Professor.”

“Potter,” Riddle says, looking him over as though expecting injury. “What did Moody have to teach you?”

“You know Moody?” The question sounded overly familiar otherwise.

A faint curve of Riddle’s lips. “Oh, only by reputation.”

“Oh. He taught us evasion. Protego. Although, ah, I’m sure the lesson on banshees was really interesting – “

Riddle waves him off. “Your peers would be the best judges of that.”

“Yes, sir.” They part ways then, Harry to the Gryffindor table and Riddle to the front of the hall.

Over lunch, Harry recounts in a low tone to Ron and Hermione how the morning with Moody had gone. “He said he’d be back next week, but really, I sort of expect him to test us by jumping out of the shadows when we’re not prepared.” He spoons more potatoes onto his plate; this sort of magical exertion always made him ravenous.

“Why now?” Hermione asks.

“Ah – tell you later?” Not that anyone’s particularly paying attention to their conversation at the table, but Harry got the impression that the attack still needed to be confidential, while it was being investigated. Hermione’s brows knit. Ron looks at him in dismay. “Look, I don’t know enough to know if it’s right, or what the papers are gonna print – “

“What happened?” Hermione hisses, but Harry won’t tell her. And when she badgers-slash-bullies Neville in Herbology that afternoon, he won’t either. So they all go to bed that night cross with one another.

 

Maybe that’s how he ends up in Voldemort’s dreams that night.

It had only happened once before, the dream in the Forbidden Forest. But this is a home, a home that would’ve been posh if it weren’t so thick with dust and dryrot and grief. It looks pureblood, artifacts taken out of their time. Voldemort’s own home?

Harry ascends the staircase, even as it crackles beneath his feet, about to give way. When he reaches the top, the entire thing crashes to the ground behind him, throwing up bitter dust.

There is a strange choking sound deep into the corridor. Harry follows it.

In a bedroom decorated for a child, there is a cage made of magic. Inside, a man with sandy hair crouches, as the cage isn’t large enough for him to fully stand. He’s choking, gasping on smoke from the curtains, which smoulder if not fully burn yet. Harry doesn’t have time to examine the scene: quickly he’s crossing the bedroom, fishing through his robes for his wand, but it’s gone missing. “Aguamenti,” he says aloud, as it’s only a dream. The smoke thickens.

Who is this? A victim of Voldemort’s, no doubt, burnt alive in his home. Harry grabs the glowing bars, and they seem to scorch him, even in the impermeability of the dreamscape.

“He won’t die.”

Harry whirls around. Voldemort stands in the doorway, his mask-like face a perfect white and his robes a perfect black. “Who is he?” Harry demands, over the man’s coughing fit. “And why have you brought me here? And why do you want to bloody kill me?”

Voldemort pauses. His mouth curves, apparently amused at the range of questions. “You wanted access to my dreams. Occasionally you gain it.”

“I didn’t!”

Voldemort clicks his tongue. “Harry, if you are going to be any sort of opponent, you need to learn more strategy than _that_.”

“I didn’t – “ He’d been curious about getting in to Voldemort’s mind before. Not recently. “I don’t want to be your _opponent_. Not my fault you didn’t manage to kill me. You left me orphaned, isn’t that enough?”

“Is it?”

Voldemort seems to actually, sincerely wait for an answer. “You are evil,” Harry bites out. “Whatever disgusting pureblood war you want to fight – you’re wrong, and you’re going to die for it. Dumbledore won one war against you already.”

“Really.” Voldemort takes a single step closer; Harry refuses to step back. “ _You_ won that war. Do not be so modest, Harry. Dumbledore was losing, before that Halloween.”

He wants to fight this. He can’t. The books he’d taken from the Hogwarts library about the Dark War had told the same narrative. “You’ll lose again,” he says. “Even if I’ve got to do it myself.”

“Ah, yes.” Another step closer. “You wanted _revenge_. Noble.”

“… So you were in the Forbidden Forest then.”

“Yes.”

“My parents deserve it.”

“Perhaps.”

A flare of anger fills Harry’s chest, rushing up his throat. “ _Perhaps_ ,” he echoes. “What does that even mean?”

“It was a war,” Voldemort says coldly. “Grow up.”

There’s a roiling of blood in his ears. Stepping forward faster than Voldemort could even anticipate, he grabs the front of his silky, ethereal robes. “ _Fuck_ you.”

Voldemort doesn’t even look particularly startled or taken aback, just annoyed, as he reaches to remove Harry’s hands. But then they touch, Voldemort’s fingers wrapping around Harry’s wrist, and it _burns_ , scorching them both. They jerk apart.

“I don’t want to be in your bloody dream,” Harry snaps, shoving past him. “And I don’t want any part of your bloody war. Just – leave me alone. Leave all of us alone.”

“The only children I will kill will be the child soldiers,” Voldemort says. “If Dumbledore doesn’t weaponize you, you will be safe.”

“Dumbledore hasn’t asked anything of me.”

“He will.” He sees Harry’s glare, raises a shoulder in a gesture that is so fucking weirdly humanizing. “He recruited among students in the war. We both did. You know that.”

Being chided about what he should know by his parents’ murderer – Harry can’t stand any of this. “I don’t want your war,” he reiterates. “Stay away from Hogwarts.”

A flicker of a smile across his thin lips. “I will not attack you within Hogwarts.”

“Fucking thanks.” He strides toward the door. When he steps through, the dream world recedes behind him.

 

When the papers arrive at breakfast the next morning, Harry is not entirely surprised to see the sandy-haired young man on the front page. _Back from the dead: Knight allegedly kept in Crouch home after reported death_. And when Harry sees the names Frank and Alice Longbottom in the article, he understands why Neville had stayed behind yesterday.

\---

Tom must be discreet that next day, while watching Harry.

The boy has not gone to Dumbledore, Tom knows both of their schedules well enough to know that. Though Dumbledore is largely absent anyway: since the attack on the Crouch home two days ago, he has departed for the Ministry each morning just after breakfast.

But Harry has not gone to _anyone_ about their – encounter in a dream. And it’s not as though the boy can dismiss it as a fiction – in class that day, Tom watches Harry tug his sleeve down over the red scores where Voldemort had grabbed his wrist the night before. Granger and Weasley do not even notice this fidgeting, as obvious as it is.

Nobody notices. Potter seems quite used to being alone.

In any case, the rest of the castle is in something of a panic after the attack. Slytherin students fear that their parents would be implicated in it; the ones who had had family in the first war fear vengeance. Tom gets some _very_ tiresome and repetitive questions in DADA within those next few days.

So he’s already gritting his teeth when he opens his office door after class on Friday afternoon, and finds the unpleasant sight of Horace Slughorn sitting behind his desk.

“Tom,” Slughorn says, rising from his chair, taking Tom’s cool hand in both of his warm ones. “I hope it’s not a bother, the elves let me in just as you were finishing class – “

“Not at all.” He charms the stack of books in his arms to re-shelve themselves. “What is the occasion?” He sits, motioning Slughorn across from him, and raps the edge of the desk to summon a tea tray.

“I’ve just spoken to Dumbledore. The school needs a Christmas party.”

“Does it?”

“These rumors….” Slughorn’s rosy lips go white as he presses them together. “Not good for children, growing up in fear, you know.”

“I know.” He wonders if Slughorn would remember he was the only Slytherin living in the parts of London that had been bombed, the only one who had lain awake wondering if he’d be killed in his bed by the Germans. “And you intend to orchestrate this party?”

“Yes, yes. And get some of the boys back together, you know! The ones who are still – in good health,” he says, gaze shifting, because they both know some of Tom’s peers had been arrested after the war, and a few more had died in prison. “I thought you’d like to hear it first.”

“Indeed. I’d be happy to attend.”

“I hope your students this year are talented?”

Tom hides a smile behind his teacup. Of course. “I’m sure you found talent to be a relative constant across years. Some exceptionally bright, some exceptionally stupid, most forgettable.”

Slughorn clucks in a chiding way, but he is amused. “And you must be teaching Harry Potter?”

“I am attempting to.”

“Oh?”

“He’s more skilled at Quidditch than any coursework. But of course I would introduce you, if you’d like.”

Horace licks his lips. “Yes, yes. Perhaps his talent just needs a bit of direction. His parents – you never knew them, but they were phenomenal in their own way. Are there others?” he goes on hungrily. “Abraxas’s grandson is in school now as well, isn’t he?”

“Draco, yes. You’ll recognize him, he looks just like Abraxas.”

“Good, good. And the Longbottom child?”

“Longbottom is trouble,” Tom says bluntly, to see the light of interest go out in Horace’s eyes. “He scarcely knows which end of a wand to point. He’s been a disappointment, given his parents’ fame.”

“What a pity,” Horace sighs, dabbing at his mouth with a kerchief. “Well, I will keep my ear out for any particularly – exciting students.”

“Please do.”

Horace is moving to rise, then hesitates. “Had you known Bartemius Crouch?”

He means Senior, not Junior. “Head Boy in my third year. I only become properly acquainted with him much later. He was in Knockturn Alley weekly, writing citations for any magic darker than a shrinking spell.”

“A travesty, the news of his son. Brilliant boy,” Slughorn says in a sigh. “Do you believe it, what Bartemius did to him? Did he ever seem the sort?”

Tom wonders what the _sort_ is, who would be able to Imperio and imprison his child. “We never really know anyone at all, do we?” is all he says.

“Merlin help us,” Slughorn murmurs. “Well, Tom, I will see you at Christmas. Do take care.”

“And you.” Tom gets up, shutting the door decisively behind him.

 

Some of the gloom of the castle lifts in the next few weeks, then, as the elves pull out Christmas decorations and Filius charms decorated trees to glide gently around the edges of the Great Hall. The newspapers do not uncover any further details of the Knights’ escape, and Crouch’s death is rather an embarrassment to the Ministry and to purebloods in general, so eventually even the speculation drops out of the dailies.

He hears that Lucius intends to install new Hogwarts governors, ones less sympathetic to Dumbledore. Lucius could be doing _far_ more in the Ministry, but – he is cautious, irritatingly so. Narcissa made him so; before her, he had been brash like his father. But no matter. Next year, they will have governors who may at last force Dumbledore out.

The very morning of the Christmas party, the magic of the Knights’ summoning spell prickles down Tom’s arm. He bolts his door before he allows the smoke snake to coalesce.

In Dolohov’s voice: “ _My Lord, he is finished_.”

Karkaroff is dead. He wouldn’t be reported missing until after the new year, at least, and he was known for stepping away from his duties at Durmstrang anyway. And by that time – well, Dolohov knew how to dispose of a body such that it wouldn’t be found until much later.

He goes to breakfast in a rather good mood, and of course Dumbledore mistakes it for Christmas cheer. “Hm,” Tom mutters, extricating himself from Dumbledore’s warm clasp on his shoulder, and flips open a charms journal to read over breakfast.

The Great Hall is closed off at midday, to make preparations. Tom’s classes are obnoxiously excitable and distracted. In his Slytherin class, Goyle sets Crabbe’s hair on fire – on accident? Intentionally? He never knows with them – and Tom thinks he should Crucio their fathers for raising such stupid sons.

Anyway. Late that afternoon, Tom returns to his quarters, pulling on dress robes, dark red with a high collar and embroidered sleeves. He intends to look imposing, that even if he must mingle in the same space as his students, they will not think he is fun or approachable or anything horrific like that.

The Great Hall glitters with enchanted snow and great ornaments twisting on suspended ribbons. Christmas trees line the perimeter. The elves are out – a rare sight for the younger students, Tom sees in their expressions – and dressed in dark blue suits as they levitate food and drinks through the crowd. The third through fifth years get butterbeer and are giddy with the mild transgression of it; the sixth and seventh years are allowed stronger drinks and are clearly going to cause trouble.

Horace’s parties were always an exercise in hedonism.

Tom doesn’t see Horace himself yet, but he does get flagged down by some alumni from his time in the Slug Club – Justinian Bones, Barney Finch, Cato Prewett. “Tom,” Barney says, plucking two glasses of wine off a passing tray, to hand him one. “Finally back at Hogwarts! It hasn’t changed, has it?”

Tom gives him a skeptical look over his wine glass. A half century of Dumbledore had changed it substantially, but they’re hardly at liberty to say so here. Anyway, this group is all Ravenclaws – still purebloods and traditionalists of a sort, but not in the way that Slytherins were purebloods. “Perhaps your memory is going, Barney,” he says instead.

“These kids are just so young. Babies! How do you do it, being surrounded by children all day? You didn’t seem to like children even when you _were_ one.”

A small shrug. “Returning to Hogwarts has had its benefits,” he demurs. “Have you seen Horace?”

“Sure, sure. He was with Dumbledore and – whoever he is, Eileen Prince’s boy, the one who took his post.”

“Severus,” Tom says a bit absently, scanning the crowd for them. He needs to keep a good relationship with Slughorn, but only after the man has stepped away from Dumbledore. Drinking more wine, he settles into listening to Justinian recount his last foxhunt.

 

They’d been late to the Christmas part since none of the boys had known the shoe polishing charm. Ron’s try had made them go dull; Neville’s had made his shoes constrict on his feet until he whimpered. As usual, they had to appeal to Hermione, who had been waiting in the common room as though she’d anticipated problems. Then the fourth year Gryffindors all go downstairs together.

Harry and Neville had met with Moody only the day before, and he’d predictably grumbled that bringing together so many wizards in one place would make for an attractive target for the escaped Knights. “Anything seems off,” he’d told Harry and Neville, “you _run_. And where do you go?”

“An office with a floo,” Neville answered, because they’d heard it a dozen times. Inf act, they’d heard it so often that even Neville’s initial fear had dulled to skepticism by now. Still, neither of them will give any cheek to Moody.

But Harry sort of sees the point as they descend the staircase: the Great Hall is fuller than he’d ever seen it, with alumni as well as students and faculty. He knows vaguely that the party’s being thrown by a former professor, but that’s it. It doesn’t really matter. An elf offers them a tray of butterbeers as they enter the space.

They mingle, ending up at a table with Mandy Brocklehurst and Terry Boot. “ – I heard Goyle’s not going home for Christmas this year,” Mandy is saying. “His dad – “ When Harry pulls out a chair beside her, her eyes go dark with caution, and she abruptly stops talking.

“Dad had to raid the Goyles a few years back,” Ron offers, making a sort of peace with the Ravenclaws. “But they all – all those families keep things _just_ this side of legal. Not that it matter, their Wizengamot frineds would just get them out otherwise.”

Terry is looking to Harry. “You’ve got classes with Mad Eye Moody,” he says, in a tone of awe and fear. “What does _he_ think?”

“Uh.” Harry rolls his butterbeer between his palms. “That it’s real and that V- You-Know-Who is back. Dunno that any of the Knights are a problem yet, though.”

“They’ve got to be,” Ron says darkly. “Have you seen Malfoy? He looks like he’s about to shit himself,” (“ _Ron_!” Hermione says, albeit laughingly) “when the papers come each morning. His parents were in _deep_ last time, too. I wouldn’t be surprised if You-Know-Who were, I’unno, living in their guesthouse or something.”

“Can you imagine?” Mandy says, giving a shiver. “Just this awful dementor-thing wafting around your house…. Maybe Malfoy’s not going home either. I wouldn’t.”

“He doesn’t look like a dementor,” Harry says, puzzled. When the table all looks at him, he shrugs. “He doesn’t. He’s got a face. Or… a mask. I think.”

Hermione swallows before asking carefully, “Do you… remember him?”

He can’t tell them. He hasn’t told anyone, not even Dumbledore. These dreams, this permeability between him and Voldemort, make him feel so fucking _tainted_. “No. But there’s books,” he lies. “With photos.”

Hermione is the worst person in the entire school to tell this lie to. “ _Are_ there?” she says doubtfully. “There were some memories of him, brought out at the trials of the Knights last time. But photos…?”

“Somewhere in the restricted section,” Harry shrugs, wishing Hermione would just lose interest. “His face is very white. And his eyes – they’re red but not, like, bloodshot? Red in the circular bit. No real nose, just slits. Like a snake’s. And, I dunno. Tall. Thin.”

This has already terrified his friends, even though he hasn’t _said_ anything. He drains his butterbeer, rises to get another. He’s got the sense as he leaves that they’re going to talk about him behind his back.

Well, whatever. Near the bar he finds Neville with Ginny and Luna Lovegood, as they watch the band set up. “Who even throws this sort of party?” he mutters, slipping between Ginny and Neville.

Ginny smiles. “It’s nice,” she says. “Slug-whatever can come throw parties here more often.” Seeing his look of skepticism, her smiles goes wider. “You’re paranoid. Spending too much time with Mad Eye. Both of you.”

“How does everyone already know who Mad Eye is?”

A shrug. “He’s the most famous Auror, probably ever. Did all the Knights’ trials himself. Also, ah, Mum and Dad know him? Through Dumbledore.”

“He said that’s how he met my parents,” Neville offers, a bit hesitant. “He was the one who recommended they become Aurors. But they met in the Order of the Phoenix.”

Harry searches his brain. He’d seen the phrase in some of the history books, but he couldn’t remember what…. But Neville, seeing his expression, is already explaining: “During the war, Dumbledore had – people. Who would fight when the Ministry wouldn’t. Like your parents. That’s what they called themselves.”

“Right, yeah.” That’s why he’s known it. The Order of the Phoenix.

“Freedom fighters,” Luna muses. “It’s very romantic, isn’t it?”

They all look at her. Given that both Harry and Neville had been orphaned by this war – “Sure,” Harry says instead. “Romantic.” Whatever the fuck that meant.

“Dad says Dumbledore’s assembling a new army,” Luna adds. “The Ministry never moves quickly enough on these things. And anyway, Voldemort learned ecoterrorism in his interim. Now that he’s part-vampire, I expect he plans to blot out the sun in the upcoming year.”

Harry had been exposed to Luna at the Burrow before, when she’d hike over the hill to visit. Neville, who had no such forewarning, is staring at her. “That’s not… not what he _does_.” And Luna only gives a little shrug, stirring the bubbles out of her soda water. And then the band strikes up, and a Ravenclaw girl in Ginny’s year grabs her to dance, and she takes Luna along. Harry and Neville watch them go.

“Are you going home for Christmas?” Harry asks Neville, filling the quiet between them.

“Yeah. Gran’s having all her friends over. It will be… a lot,” Neville says with a long-suffering sigh. “Are you?”

Harry shakes his head. He’d gone home with Ron the past couple years, but – this time, he begged off. With Voldemort back, he refused to put the Weasleys in any sort of danger. They deserved better. And Voldemort might have said he wouldn’t attack Harry within Hogwarts – not that his word meant anything – but he hadn’t promised that he wouldn’t attack once Harry was off the premises. So. It was better this way. Molly hadn’t even protested much, so Harry expects his reasons are clear to everyone.

They find Ron and Hermione at a high top table, eating canapes with Padma and Parvati. “Harry, you just missed it, Nott spilled punch on Pansy and she hit him with a mustache hex. Riddle had to drag them both out. They’ll probably get detention for a week,” Ron says happily.

As Riddle had hardly looked as though he were enjoying the night, Harry thinks he probably welcomed the break. “Mustache hex doesn’t sound so bad.”

Ron makes a face. “Trust me, it _didn’t_ suit him.”

The music gets louder. Padma goes off to dance with Dean. Hermione is sneaking a book under the table, trying to read discreetly.

Then there’s footsteps behind them. “Harry?” Professor Riddle is nearly apologetic.

Harry puts his butterbeer down, wondering if he’s in trouble. “Sir?”

“Professor Slughorn wished to be introduced. If this isn’t too significant an interruption,” Riddle says, his dark gaze passing over the table.

“Oh – sure.” He gives a tiny shrug in his friends’ direction, and follows Riddle away.

It’s only when they’re away from the music and chatter that Harry glances up at Riddle. “Who is he?”

“A former professor. Potions. He taught here for sixty years, until Severus took on his position.”

“And… what does he want with me?” It’s a little too candid because Harry’s a little too tipsy.

Riddle thinks nothing of it, or at least gives no indication of such. “The same curiosity as anyone may have, I imagine. He knew, and apparently loved, your parents. Doubtless you will get some reminiscing.”

“Oh. That’d be good.”

“Would it?” Riddle gestures him into a smaller sideroom, where a man in a glittering smoking jacket sits speaking with an older Slytherin student and what must be her grandfather.

“Ah, Harry! At long last!” Slughorn lifts himself out of his chair, grasping Harry’s hand in both his own. “Tom, stay, _stay_. Let your colleagues play chaperone for awhile.”

“Unfortunately, on this occasion it falls to me. I expect you’ll like to address the hall before the end of the night?”

“May I?”

And Riddle nods, letting himself out. Slughorn pours two glasses of liquor from an expensive-looking decanter. Pressing one into Harry’s hand: “The Boy Who Lived. _Please_ do tell me all about yourself.”

 

Tom devotes the rest of the night to, approximately, hosting duties. He prefers logistics and instructions to this sodden mingling. He had tried so hard to escape this past and everyone in it, it is all just inane.

At the very least, he derives some satisfaction from informing his erstwhile peers, when they fumble for the names of their Slytherin cohort, which of them had been sentenced to Azkaban.

As the night draws to a close, the music stops, and Slughorn and then Dumbledore wish everyone a happy Christmas, and then everyone begins to file out. Faculty is stationed at the doors to usher students to their dormitories. Snape is glowering at the buzzed, loud, wound-up Slytherin students as they file past already, so Tom is free to leave.

When he enters the corridor to his private quarters, he must first pass his office. And it’s faint, but… there is light filtering from under the door.

What the _fuck_.

The handle is unlocked, and he lets himself in, expecting to find students drunkenly snogging or worse. Instead, he finds Harry Potter sitting on the floor, his back against Tom’s desk, with Nagini’s head on his knee. And he is saying to her, in _exquisite_ Parseltongue, “ – I don’t mind staying in here for Christmas, the castle’s nice this time of year – “

Tom clears his throat.

When Harry looks up, it’s clear Slughorn had offered him something stronger than butterbeer. “Sorry, sorry,” he mutters, flushing, but he’s not moving Nagini’s head from his lap, so he stays seated on the rug. And Tom, second guessing everything about Harry with this revelation, sinks seated across from him.

“I didn’t know you had a talking snake,” Harry says, giving Nagini a pat as though she’s a dog and not a viper that has eaten entire humans before. “I met one before, in a zoo when I was small. But the Muggles can’t hear them, can they?”

He doesn’t know. Harry doesn’t know that Parseltongue exists, or that he is apparently a Parselmouth. And, well, Tom’s not about to tell him. “No, they can’t,” he says, answering in English, not that Harry even recognizes the difference. “Typically I keep Nagini in my own quarters at night, but as I didn’t expect any students in here….” He raises his eyebrows in question.

“Yeah, sorry. Ah, Professor Slughorn said we should go someplace quieter, and that your office was closest, and that you wouldn’t mind. And then I just… stayed. The party’s over now?”

“Yes, and I expect your friends are looking for you.”

“Yeah.” He doesn’t seem bothered by this.

“What did you and Horace speak of?” Though he anticipates the answer already.

Harry gives a small shrug. “Just – things. He told me about my parents and their friends. He said my mum and dad only started to fancy each other in his – club.” (This is precisely the sort of lie Horace _would_ tell, Tom thinks.) “And how he’s friends with all these Quidditch players and authors and politicians. He said he’d write me a letter, if I wanted to be an Auror.”

This is all laying it on a bit thick. Horace must be feeling irrelevant in his retirement. “That’s generous of him,” Tom says instead.

“Mmhm.” Harry has let his head fall back against the desk, at ease now for some bloody reason. “He said you were a really good student. And that everyone – liked you.”

By his hesitation, Tom wonders if Harry meant to say _fancied you_ instead. “They did. I was fortunate to have a good experience in school.”

“Yeah. So I don’t mind staying.” It would be a non-sequitur, if Tom hadn’t caught Harry’s conversation with Nagini. “The holidays are better here, anyway.”

“You live with relatives?”

“Yeah. My mum’s sister. It’s….” He lifts a hand, drops it, unwilling to put words to whatever his experience has been. Tom waits. Harry doesn’t expand on this.

“If you’re staying for the holidays, would you like to come by for tea one afternoon?”

Harry is curious, wary. He’d tried to be close to Tom once before and gotten unceremoniously shoved away, a few years ago. But obviously now – with the dreams, the Parseltongue, and whatever else may connect them – Tom is more interested in keeping Harry close than he had been then. “Sure?” Harry says. “I mean, yes. Thank you.”

“Of course.” He stands. “Come, Nagini,” he says to her – still in English, but she understands enough to lift herself out of Harry’s lap.

So Harry stands too, a little wobbly. “Stay still,” Tom mutters, drawing his wand. And when Harry squeaks a protest, Tom humors him with an explanation: “Sobering chamr. Horace can be heavy-handed with his mead.”

The sobering charm makes Harry shiver, and then he’s clear-headed enough to be embarrassed. “Have I got detention?” he says, gesturing to the office. “For, y’know, breaking and entering.”

“At best, you were merely an accomplice.” Though really, he should; the students had been warned that getting actually inebriated would carry consequences. “But no, you don’t have detention. Just go to bed. And tell your peers that you haven’t been kidnapped.”

“Yes, sir. ‘Night. ‘Night, Nagini,” he addresses her. A flick of her tongue. Potter strides out, cheeks still pink.

When the door is warded shut, Tom looks to Nagini, but she speaks first. “ _You did not know he speaks our language._ ”

“ _No. But he didn’t know it either. Do not tell him._.”

It had to be more than coincidence. Tom is certain he and Potter aren’t related to any meaningful degree – the Gaunt tree had been obscure and twisted, but the Potter line wasn’t anywhere on it, as far back as he’d been able to trace. Parselmouths existed in other countries, but the Potter family had been in Britain for hundreds of years now. A fluke?

There were no books on Parseltongue in the Hogwarts library, or any other credible library in Britain. The Gaunt family had had no need to write down their language – it would only make Ministry interference easier, anyway – so Tom’s research would need to take place elsewhere.

He hasn’t returned to Knockturn Alley in quite some time, but he thinks he will have to pay it a visit over the Christmas holiday.

 


	4. Chapter 4

Tom and Harry sit across from one another at the Hogwarts Christmas day lunch. Harry comes for tea the next afternoon and tells him about his private instruction with Moody. He is still wary – really he should be – and Tom is attempting not to come off too strong, because if nothing else he knows his own obsessive nature. He sends Harry off with a book on Dark creatures, which will hopefully occupy him for the rest of the holiday.

The following day, Tom leaves the castle to visit Knockturn Alley. Borgin and Burke’s first, though he thinks they will have nothing relevant for him there. The hag who had bought the shop from him glowers through her matted hair; he buys a galleon’s worth of books from her anyway. And then on to the dedicated bookshop across the way. The clerks will never directly ask what a client is looking for – it can be a liability to them both to say – but Tom asks for the language section and is shown to a small bookcase wedged in the back. He goes home with a book about Parseltongue – written in Arabic, which is a pain in the arse – but already he assumes it won’t contain the answers he seeks. Parseltongue isn’t a spontaneously-occurring trait, yet Potter….

It’s frustrating, whatever it means.

He ventures out farther in the next few days: a warlock’s shop in Cardiff, a vampire’s home in Belfast. He hasn’t got time to travel outside the British Isles, so he will need to set this investigation aside.

On his birthday he receives a note at breakfast, from a post relay system. In fine script: _I may be able to assist in your search for answers_.

He had shaken out a pair of leather gloves to handle the note at all; he turns it over and then draws his wand. It’s not enchanted; nor does it give any clues to its provenance. So he turns it into a puff of smoke. He will not be beholden to anyone, least of all someone who doesn’t sign their notes.

 

The day Karkaroff’s body is discovered, Tom sees it in Albus’s face before the announcement. “It is unfortunate,” he murmurs, when Albus tells him. “I’m sure his students will be devastated.”

“Had you known him?”

Albus is still working out whether this was a death affiliated with Voldemort. And honestly, Severus is nearer to Dark magic than Tom is, with actual contact with Voldemort, so he must not have been able to tell Albus anything himself. Karkaroff had always been masked, and always a bit set apart from the British purebloods who make up most of Voldemort’s ranks. “No,” Tom says. “But I expect you did.”

Albus gives a tired nod. “The funeral is on Friday.”

Tom thinks he would like to attend.

On Friday he departs with Albus and Minerva for Bulgaria, to a pagan temple where the funeral ritual will be held. Other educators are there, headmasters and headmistresses and faculty from across the globe, because really they are an exclusive community. The room is tense, as though everyone anticipates another attack in the midst of things.

And when Tom returns to Hogwarts, he finds another unsigned note, likely magicked into his pocket. _You are getting careless._

Is he? He is curious, but – pursuing this person and whatever they assume they know isn’t of interest to him. Regardless, he must dedicate his time to preparing for the new term. This note, too, gets burned.

\---

Harry is so bored of being alone in the castle that he’s waiting in the Great Hall for everyone to return back from the Christmas holiday. The carriages clank up to the door and there’s the low buzz of student energy before they even enter.

Ron and Hermione are together, walking in with their heads bent low in conversation. They look so grim that Harry falters in approaching them. “Oh, Harry, hi,” Ron says, looking up. “I’ve got loads of presents for you – Fred and George say you can only open theirs underwater though, or maybe inside a tub of ballistics gel – Here, it’s all in my trunk – “

“Is everything alright?” Harry asks.

Hermione cocks her head. “You’d know better than we would, wouldn’t you?”

“Er.” He’d absorbed some of the news, about the Bulgarian headmaster, but it seemed that was more likely Grindelwald’s doing than Voldemort’s, wasn’t it? The news had seemed very far away. “Nothing’s really happened here – “

And then, abruptly, he goes cold. His vision greys, and all the noises around him become indistinct. “Harry – “ He faintly registers Ron’s hand gripping his upper arm, but his vision is drawn elsewhere – above the crowd of students, a dark floating figure, ragged and decaying – he hears screaming –

And then there’s a burst of bright light, and the figure is dispelled. The screaming in Harry’s ears recedes. “What – “ He looks down to find himself seated on a stool, probably conjured by Hermione before he hit the floor. Ron is still holding him upright. Swallowing, he tries again. “What the _fuck_.”

“Mr. Potter,” McGonagall says severely behind him, and he flinches, because of course he hadn’t known she’d be there. “That is a Dementor. And they are _not_ allowed in the castle.” She is nearly storming past him to address whatever this crisis is, then stops herself. “There will be further instructions at dinner,” she says to the students still gathered in the entryway. “If you feel yourself affected, please go see Madam Pomfrey, and she will administer you chocolate.”

Chocolate? Harry can’t help but feel small and a bit patronized by this. He shakes Ron’s hand off, looking around. Nobody else looks nearly so… drawn.

Yet another way he’s a freak, then.

They do not go to Madam Pomfrey. Instead, dropping Ron and Hermione’s trunks off, they end up in the boys’ dormitory, huddled together on Harry’s bed as Ron drops a load of gifts into his lap. “Christmas was a bit boring without you,” he says. “Bill and Charlie couldn’t get time off. We had Aunt Tessie and Auntie Muriel over, and they’re both nightmares…. Next year, we should stay here with you.”

Next year. Would Harry survive an entire year or feeling targeted by Voldemort? Still, he smiles, popping open a chocolate frog box. “Cheers. The castle was quiet. Goyle was here, and two older Hufflepuffs. I sat next to Hagrid at the Christmas day lunch, and apparently he’s trying to get a unicorn foal here for next term. And I had tea with Riddle the day after. _Oh_ ,” he says, having taken a mouthful of chocolate. It makes him go very warm, easing some of the dread that the Dementors had provoked.

Hermione looks at him curiously. “They hadn’t brought in the Dementors already?”

“No. What’s a Dementor? And – why?” But before she answers, he’s reaching for Riddle’s book on Dark creatures, flipping it open. They both look surprised; he shrugs. “I told him – Riddle – that I liked the darkmantle lesson last month. I think he felt sorry for me.”

Ron goes on anyway: “Dementors are soul-suckers. They’re normally only used to guard Azkaban, but Percy heard from the other Prefects that the Ministry brought them here for security. Because of Durmstrang. They’ve – whether it’s Grindelwald or You-Know-Who, nobody’s saying which of them yet – never targeted schools before. Everyone is scared.”

“Oh.” Harry drops a chocolate frog in each of their laps, a bit of him hoping they’d also been affected. “That’s really – a lot. Shouldn’t they still be guarding Azkaban, then? Whoever is still in there, I mean.”

Ron shrugs, peeling open the chocolate frog. “We might be in danger, but Dumbledore definitely is. He’s the only wizard You-Know-Who refused to fight last time, but maybe he’s gotten braver since the breakout.”

“Really? Dumbledore seems fine,” Harry muses. “He made Snape open all the crackers on Christmas, it was great.”

“We’ll find out more at dinner, won’t we,” Hermione sighs. “Here, Harry. You need this more than I do.” She passes him back his chocolate. And Harry would like to protest, but by now the Dark creatures book lies open in his lap, to a Dementor cupping a wizard’s face in both bony hands to take his soul. Even the illustration makes him go a bit cold and empty. He swallows another mouthful of chocolate.

 

They are told very little at dinner, only that the Dementors have come as part of the Ministry’s security for Hogwarts. They will not approach students, and students are not to approach them. That’s all. Karkaroff is not named, nor are Voldemort or Grindelwald, only “the unfortunate dangers of our present world beyond these walls.” The weight of these words seems to hang heavy over the school for the rest of the night.

\---

As Tom is the DADA professor, it hypothetically falls to him to educate his students about the Dementors. More pressingly, it falls to him to teach them the Patronus charm.

It’s NEWTs level magic, and even then not all the students get it. But the Dementors hover near the edges of the grounds, making early Quidditch games even chillier and more miserable than they naturally are. Albus and Minerva’s Patronuses typically keep them away from the crowds, but some students have already approached Tom about learning Expecto Patronum before its place in the curriculum.

Of course, Tom can’t cast a Patronus. Why would he? He ruined his soul at the age of sixteen, making two Horcruces in quick succession. His own NEWTs were flawless but for that one spell – he still achieved an O in Defense and a note from the examiner that his casting was a pleasure to behold – but he always felt it made people perceive him differently, the tragic orphan who couldn’t scrape up enough happiness for a simple Patronus.

So, as he does every year, he must appeal to Minerva. At least it’s not Dumbledore.

One afternoon in mid-February, he finds her in the staff room, and he attempts his most gracious expression as he approaches her. “Minerva, would you do a demonstration of your Patronus for the sixth years on Friday? They’ve already learned its theory.”

Minerva pops her day planner into existence by twisting her fingers. She’s needed at the Ministry Friday, and then Tom’s seventh years meet when Minerva is teaching the fourth year Ravenclaws, and then Tom’s sixth year meets during her first year Slytherins….

It is a headache. “Ask Alastor,” Minerva suggests, when Tom must look to be in mild despair. “He’s around often enough for Potter and Longbottom, he might as well.”

“… I’ll ask him. Thank you.”

Moody. He hates Moody. The man was wild, a fanatic for law enforcement. Moody had killed Silvius Avery before Tom’s – or, well, Voldemort’s – eyes, with a severing charm across Avery’s jugular. It could have been Avada Kedavra, which is quick and perhaps painless, but Tom assumes Moody wanted to watch Avery bleed out. He is no less sadistic than the Knights are, he’s only got a badge to protect him.

Nevertheless. Moody is there that following evening, collecting Potter and Longbottom from the Great Hall after dinner. Tom approaches. “Alastor, a moment?”

Moody’s bright blue eye swivels as though he expects Tom carries a concealed weapon. (Honestly, what would even be the _point_ , when he’s got a wand?) “We haven’t got time.”

“I know. Would you be available to demonstrate a Patronus for the sixth years on Friday?”

Eye still swiveling as he considers: “Can’t do it yourself?”

Someday Tom will murder this man. “Unfortunately, no.”

“Fine,” Moody says after a moment. “But you should be teaching it to the little ones as well.”

“The fifth years are introduced to the theory at the end of the year – “

“All of them,” Moody says over him. “Never too early to learn how to ward off evil.”

Tom would like to argue that anyone younger hasn’t got the emotional self-actualization to center themselves in the face of a Dementor. “There are a limited number of days instruction in a year, and a Ministry-mandated curriculum to accomplish.” Why is he arguing with Moody, who knows nothing of teaching or anything else. “Thank you for your time. I’ll see you Friday.”

“I’m bringing Potter and Longbottom with me.”

“Fine.”

Moody turns to clank off, and Longbottom follows. Potter’s eyes meet Tom’s, and he gives a tiny apologetic shrug before he goes.

 

On Friday, then, just as the 10:30 DADA class is set to begin, Moody limps into the classroom, with Harry and Longbottom behind him. They slip into desks at the rear of the classroom, and immediately the Weasley twins – what daemon had Tom angered, that they’d both qualified for NEWTs level DADA – launch into their comedy hour. “The boy wonders,” Fred says, shooting off a volley of sparks that burn out just over Neville’s curling hair; he almost doesn’t flinch.

“Hear you’re going to tag team You-Know-Who,” George says. “Harry comes from the front with a frostbite spell and then _bam_ , Neville’s got him with a frying pan to the back of the skull.”

“A frying pan spell?” Neville frowns.

“Nah, mate, just a frying pan. Mum’s got a good one.”

Tom waits it out – he’s found that, although the Weasley twins will waste the first two minutes of class with their pith, disciplining them takes out at least five. Sometimes he cuts it short with a silencing charm or tongue-sticking spell, and they take the humiliation graciously. But today, the class is intrigued by Moody’s presence, enough that they settle into their desks promptly.

(And Tom is left to wonder, when did anyone get the impression that _Longbottom_ was also his opponent? The prophecy is only known by Albus and Severus. Presumably it’s only Moody’s attention on the boy that has elevated him.)

Moody steps before the sixth years without giving Tom a chance to introduce him. “Alastor Moody,” he rasps. “Head of the Aurors’ division of the DMLE. Had a hand in the arrest and trials of fourteen Knights of Walpurgis.” This last syllable, he nearly spits. “This morning, I’m here to teach you about the Patronus.”

He spares no time for the theory – the class had been reading it for a week anyway – but instead lifts the staff in which his wand was concealed. “Expecto Patronum!” A shimmering falcon bursts into existence, swooping low over the students’ heads. There’s a few gasps and a few cheers. George reaches up as though to catch it; it might have gorged his hand if he hadn’t moved it in time.

“The Patronus is a pure creature,” Moody says. “It’s made of happiness and good intentions. If you try to cast it with any spite, malice, bitterness – it won’t go well. Nor if you’ve been corrupted by any sort of dark magic. You’ve told them of Raczidian?” he addresses Tom.

“Raczidian, the dark wizard consumed by worms when he cast a Patronus. It’s arguably myth rather than recorded history – “

“It is a _warning_!” Moody slaps his hand down on the desk, making all the more delicate students jump. “Any of you playing around with dark magic, don’t even bother, just see yourselves out now. The rest of you, wands out.”

None of the students excuse themselves, though there’s a few curious glances around the room, at exactly the people they should suspect of dabbling in dark magic. But Montague is stupid and Warrington has political aspirations; neither would throw away their lives on dark magic just yet. Tom spells the desks to the edges of the classroom, and everyone forms a semi-circle before Moody.

“You’ll need a happy memory. Happiest you’ve got. You all ‘ve been around the Dementors?” Nods – either they’ve encountered them at Quidditch matches, or filing off campus for the Valentine’s Hogwarts visit. “What do they feel like?”

“Sad.” “Cold.” “Hopeless.”

“ _Ah_.” He points a finger – well, most of a finger, missing its tip from long-ago battle – at the Muggleborn girl who’d said the last. Her eyes widen. “What you need, is _hope_.”

It is the softest, most sentimental class they’ll have to do all year, and Tom and Moody are probably the two unsquishiest people in the entire castle. Still, they coax the students through the project of holding their happiest memory in mind. “Your dog?” Tom must ask a struggling boy named Arnold. “What about the dog?”

“I just really like him,” Arnold mutters, going red.

“Is that a _specific_ memory?”

“No, sir.”

“Do better.” He steps away. Both Weasley twins are doing fine – honestly, their apparent incapacity for grief just looks like naivete – and so is Johnson, beside them. Moody’s talking to a blunt, unemotional girl named Skipper, and Tom’s got to tell a boy named Westmeyer to stop holding his wand as though he’s going to stab somebody with it, for Merlin’s sake.

At last he looks for the fourth years. Longbottom’s brow is furrowed in concentration as he repeatedly conjures the barest wisp of smoke. And Potter – is sitting on a table, watching him and looking lost.

A bolt of anger goes through Tom. Potter is confident to the point of being brash. It should be Longbottom weeping in a corner as Potter casts a lion or dragon or whatever predictable Patronus he will have. Tom looks for Moody, who had taken the initiative to bring Potter and Longbottom to begin with, but he and Skipper are still drilling on memories. Suppressing a sigh, Tom approaches.

“Longbottom – fine. Let the magic gather before you dispel it. Potter – “ He makes a gesture as though welcoming him to the open floor. “What is the point of having you here – missing Herbology, at that – if you aren’t going to take advantage of the instruction?”

Potter is rolling his wand between his palms. “I don’t think I should be practicing this. Sir.”

“In that case, return to your Herbology class. Later you may apologize to Auror Moody for wasting his time.”

Harry’s eyes widen. He had expected a solicitous _Oh no, dear boy, why do you feel such sad things?_ As though Tom is the sort. “I can’t just – go,” he says. “Do you believe it’s true, the bit about dark magic?”

Many years ago, Severus had cast a Patronus, a doe, to prove to Voldemort that his devotion to that mudblood Lily Evans was significant. He’d never known the other Knights to cast them, but then, the creatures banished by a Patronus were the allies of the Knights anyway. “Potentially. You really don’t seem the type to dabble in dark magic – not that the library even has much of substance. I don’t know that you could corrupt your soul with anything in there if you’d tried.”

Harry shakes his head, nearly smiling at Tom’s disdain. “Not that. Just – I have been cursed.” His fingers sweep his hair from his forehead. Tom so rarely sees the scar he had once left on that infant.

So he is quiet, considering for a moment. “Who told you you were cursed?”

“Ah. Dumbledore called it a curse scar, but it’s more – I just know. The way it feels. Like it’s still – “ he nearly swallows these next two words. “Inside me.”

Tom has to take a moment to process this. It had only been the Killing Curse. “More sophisticated – that is, arcane,” he amends, “dark magic might leave traces in that way. The Killing Curse is straightforward, however. As the name might suggest.” He shouldn’t feel the need to defend himself, yet here he is, hackles up at Harry’s words.

“Maybe there were other curses that night.”

 _There weren’t_. Instead, he shrugs. “Perhaps. But at this age, dark magic would have broken apart your soul. You’d be – manic, wild. As you seem rather in control of your faculties, Mr. Potter, we may assume dark magic has not corrupted you from the inside out.”

(He speaks from bitter experience. How on _earth_ had he gotten through the last month of his fifth year, after Myrtle’s death…. He’d taken his OWLs in this state, for fuck’s sake. That entire summer had been – feverish, dreamlike. He’d killed his father bloodlessly, yet he woke up with the taste of blood in his mouth every morning.)

But the words had given Harry fortitude; he squares his shoulders now. “Yes, sir. Thank you.”

“Have you got a specific memory in mind?”

Harry nods, and even though Tom hadn’t asked what it was, he says, “The first time I flew.”

There’s nothing especially interesting in it – it’s not good news, relief, love. But fine. Tom nods him onward, and steps away.

Harry doesn’t manage a patronus by the end of class, but neither does anyone else. “Maybe we should cage a Dementor to practice on,” Moody muses, surveying the students as they sink back into their seats.

“Oh god,” says George, who’d come the nearest to a corporeal patronus today. “Please don’t.”

“Apart from everything else, it would be a liability.” And Tom already struggles to motivate half the class _without_ a Dementor’s presence. “Thank you, Auror Moody.”

Moody grunts, letting himself out. The class breaks. Potter and Longbottom go with them, their heads tucked downward in conversation.

\---

Moody has never once patronized Harry or Neville as being too young to learn anything, or too fragile to hear details. Harry thinks he really should ask Moody what he’d asked Riddle – whether dark magic could infect people in the way he felt infected.

But when he tries, Moody casts a dozen diagnostic for tracking and bugging spells. “It’s not like that,” Harry says, shivering as the diagnostics rush down his body, prickling at the fine hair on his belly and legs. “It’s like – I don’t know. Like….” _There might be someone inside me_. He couldn’t imagine a worse thing to say to Moody, who was already paranoid at the best of times.

“It’s good to be vigilant about such things,” Moody says. “Dark magic is pernicious. But,” he slips his wand back into its staff, “you’re not bugged.”

“Yes, sir.” He can’t say anything more. He does get a note to the Restricted Section. And when he passes Professor Riddle in the stacks one night, they exchange the most minimum nods before going in separate directions.

\---

In March, Moody captures a boggart in the staff room. It is only a hunch on his part, but given how much Potter has said about his antipathy for them, he suspects Potter’s boggart might be a Dementor. Their next tutoring session, he brings it in. “Potter, stand there. Longbottom, back.”

And then he releases the boggart, and it shifts into that dark decaying mass, swooping down on Harry, and when Harry next opens his eyes, he’s on the floor and Neville is trying to shove a chocolate bar into his mouth. “I heard my mother,” he says faintly, pushing Neville’s hand away.

“Your mother?” Moody sounds skeptical.

“Uh-huh. I’d always heard a woman screaming, when they got close. I couldn’t make out the words before. But she’s yelling for James, and then – then asking him to kill her instead of me.”

Both Moody and Neville are looking at him warily as he sits up, sucking the corner of the chocolate. He’d had a few close encounters with the Dementors this term – they seem so uniquely hellbent on sucking his soul from his body, Harry has wondered if they’re still loyal to Voldemort. And each time he has had to be _rescued_ , dragged away and revived. It is humiliating. When he’d fallen from his broom in the middle of a rainy Quidditch match, Dumbledore had gone straight to the Ministry to demand their removal. Yet the Dementors still hover at the borders of the grounds.

And now Moody has corralled the boggart back into its chest. “Good,” he says grimly. “You’ll learn on this. You too, Longbottom.”

“I don’t – I mean, Dementors aren’t _great_ – “

“If Potter stands – here.” Moody makes a spot on the floor near the chest. “You can cast from behind. Don’t distract it.”

That day was exhausting. So was the next. And when they broke for the weekend, Moody left the boggart in the Defense classroom. And that’s where Harry has wandered later on Sunday afternoon.

He’s able to conjure an incorporeal Patronus in the absence of a Dementor, but it’s little more than silver smoke, and it dissipates immediately as the Dementor’s cold dread seeps into his flesh.

So he’s sitting on a desk, the locked chest before him. _Expecto Patronum, Expecto Patronum_. He can’t look weak any longer.

The door swings open, and Riddle enters, only faltering slightly at the scene. “Harry?”

“Hi. Ah, should I get out?”

“Not at all.” He puts a boot to the chest’s iron lock; the boggart inside snarls and pounds at the hinges. “Your boggart is a Dementor?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Good. _Alohomora_.” And before Harry can protest, the chest springs open and a furious Dementor bears down on him –

“Expecto Patronum!” He didn’t have time to find happiness; he’s casting out of fear and frustration instead. The Patronus swirls before him, slowing the Dementor mometarily, but then he feels himself going faint, his vision greying –

“ _Riddikulus_.” Riddle steps forward, and the Dementor flickers into something else, a human figure – a mirror image – but then it’s gone, and Tom vanishes the boggart back into its chest.

Harry’s skin is still goosebumped. “I need to get it,” he mutters. “I can’t let anyone – save me anymore.”

“No?”

Ron and Hermione had told him after that Quidditch match, that when he’d slipped from his broom, half the faculty had been on their feet, Dumbledore and McGonagall and Riddle and Snape (for some ungodly reason) had all cast protective spells that had kept him from hitting the ground. It felt weird, to be so – protected. But he shouldn’t _have_ to be, he shouldn’t be more fragile than his peers….

Sometimes he feels broken.

He manages a quarter-smile for Riddle. “Well, I won’t always have someone else around to save me.”

“That’s very pragmatic,” Tom says, carefully neutral. “What are you doing wrong with your Patronus?”

“I’m doing it right! – Well, not that time, but you didn’t…..” _Warn me_ , the words die on his lips. It sounds weak even in his head. He begins again. “I’m doing it right, I’ve got the memory in mind and then my wand – “ He makes the motion perfectly. “But when the Dementor gets too near and I can’t concentrate – “

“Why not?”

His tone is abrupt; Harry gives him a wary look. “Because I can’t.”

“Meditative exercises will be beneficial in disregarding intrusive thoughts and feelings – “

“I can hear my mother dying,” Harry snaps.

Riddle barely pauses. “That is what dementors _do_ ,” he says. “They dredge up someone’s worst memories and force them to relive it. The sooner you learn to disregard it, the sooner you may cast a Patronus.”

“Are you _joking_?” Harry doesn’t mention his parents often, but when he does, he’s used to people making sad noises about how young and brave and wonderful they were, and how much he is like them. Riddle’s cool indifference infuriates him. “I tell you I heard my mother dying and you think I should just get over it?”

“Yes.” Riddle steps in. “I grew up orphaned as well. My mother died in childbirth. I don’t understand what the value of grieving _now_ may be. It’s only harming you.”

Under better circumstances, Harry might have found the grace to express sympathy. Now, he glares. “Your mother wasn’t murdered.”

“No. Nevertheless, my point stands.”

Harry is not equipped to have this fight. Not mentally, not emotionally. He’s fourteen and Riddle is a professor, and Harry just obviously _cares_ more than Riddle does, so he’ll always lose. “What is the matter with you,” he mutters, grabbing his bookbag from the desk before he strides for the door.

“Harry.” Riddle casts a spell to lock the door, trapping them in here.

And he’s still working off raw anger when he points his wand at the door’s hinges instead. “ _Reducto_.” The wood around the hinges explodes inward, the door crashes toward them, and Harry steps around the mess to leave.

He’s going to get _so much_ detention.

 

But Riddle doesn’t pursue him, nor does he receive a summons to detention, or to either Dumbledore’s or McGonagall’s office. At dinner that night, Riddle looks fine at the head table, clearly trying to fend off Professor Sprout’s good natured conversation as he reads a very thick book. And when Ron and Hermione notice just how flustered and furious Harry is that evening, he drags them into the boys’ dorm and puts up a silencing charm on his bed curtains.

And he tells them – well, some of it. “Riddle said I shouldn’t care about my dead mother,” was enough to incense them thoroughly. He doesn’t need them to know the rest.

“Go to Dumbledore,” Hermione begs. “He’s completely out of line.”

But Dumbledore is a distant and mysterious figure in Harry’s life. And anyway, he’s loath to look any weaker in front of Riddle than he already had. “Maybe,” he lies.

Ron is sitting with his elbows on his knees, a bit hunched over. “Thought he was making an effort to be less of a bastard to you.”

“Apparently not. Anyway.” Harry sits back against his pillows. “It doesn’t matter. Moody’s been good. I’ll get it soon. Or else, y’know, you both need to prop up my empty body somewhere hilarious. The first floor chandelier, maybe.”

“Harry!” Hermione says in horrified laughter. “Really, we should be learning this too. Just in case.”

But he feels it even more acutely than when he’d said it to Riddle this afternoon. _I can’t rely on anyone else to save me again_.

 

A week later, Moody comes in with a book on Occlumency. “Not that it’s ever a bad idea to learn how to keep people out of your head,” he says. “But for now, it’ll help with the Dementors.”

Staring down at the cover ( _Mind Magicks: Occlumency and More_ ), Harry knows that Tom has suggested this. Maybe it’s meant in good faith, but more likely it’s meant to mock him, so immediately he hates it. Avoiding Moody’s gaze, he thumbs through the opening chapter.

“On your feet, Potter,” Moody says. “What’ve you done since last time?”

Harry’s up, but he leaves his wand in his pocket. “Nothing, sir. I haven’t gotten any better.”

He really deserves the tongue-twisting hex he gets then for impertinence. “Longbottom?” Moody asks, turning to him.

“Ah – I think I’ve got it – but I haven’t practiced with the Dementor, I mean, boggart.” Neville’s drawing his wand, the one he’d bought himself over Christmas. It suits him. “Expecto Patronum!”

And there’s a cloud of silver mist first, and then it coalesces into something small and pointy. “Weasel?” Harry guesses, squinting into the mist. “Ferret?”

“Mongoose,” Neville says happily. “I just got the hang of it last weekend – I would’ve shown you,” he adds in apology, “but you seemed, ah, distracted.”

 _Miserable_ , Neville is too kind to say. Harry forces his face into a smile. “No, that’s great. Really.”

“Potter, stand here.” Moody pops open the chest so Neville’s patronus can practice on the boggart.

So Harry’s got a few minutes alone as Neville and Moody drill on the patronus. And the Mind Magicks book is in reach, and it’s _horrifying_ because apparently mind-reading is real and no one had ever warned Harry. Suddenly he’s reviewing every untoward thought he’s ever had in an adult’s presence.

“Who can do Legil – ?” He stutters on the word.

“Gran,” Neville says in a sigh. “It would get me in loads of trouble.”

“Can she?” Moody asks with interest.

“Yeah. Always gave me a headache. Literally.”

“So you’d know,” Harry says, almost relieved. “Nobody could read your mind secretly.”

“The good ones could,” Moody says. “Dumbledore, certainly. Maybe Snape, maybe Riddle. It’s not dark magic in itself,” he adds, “but it’s – questionable. What use civilians would have for it....” He shakes his head. “I never like it myself. Need it for interrogation sometimes, but – it’s never just a one-way connection. It’s always reciprocal, to an extent. Unpleasant.”

And Harry’s breath catches in his throat. The way he and Voldemort are connected – the dreams – He shoves the book in his bag, to examine in the privacy of his bed later.

 

It’s fortuitous, then, that Harry is awake late that night. He’s cast a silencing charm around his bed, and a lantern swings over his head as he reads through Moody’s book. There’s only a few instances of dreams being mentioned at all, and he reads them carefully before flipping back to the introduction on Occlumency.

“ _Ahhh_!”

There’s a scream from Ron’s bed, and Harry’s jumping up before he even grabs his wand. The room is dark, and there’s a scuffle of activity, and a man with a sallow, skull-like face shoves past Harry to get out. “Hey!” Harry yells, grabbing at his ragged cloak, and the man swings around. He raises a knife – and brings it down on the taut fabric instead of Harry’s hand. Then he is gone.

They’re all awake now, and Ron stands in the center of the room, Cannons blanket wrapped tightly around him. “That was Sirius Black,” he says in high-pitched disbelief. “Sirius Black leaning over me with a knife.”

It’s decided then that Ron and Harry will go to McGonagall, as the other three sit up with all the lanterns lit. And then things move very quickly: McGonagall fetches Dumbledore, and Ron’s got to tell his story twice, and then all the heads of house are brought in to wake their students and bring them to the Great Hall while the castle is searched for Black.

And suddenly Ron is a celebrity. McGonagall had asked them to be quiet about the entire thing, lest they incite panic, but somehow Ron ends up with a crowd around him anyway, listening to his retelling: “ – And I thought it was a dream at first, but then he was leaning over me, with this great bloody knife – “

Harry sits in an adjacent sleeping bag, watching the faculty and prefects confer. Black must have gotten the bed wrong, that he’d come to kill Harry but approached Ron’s bed first. But then… Black had faced him with a knife too. Harry doesn’t know what it means. He watches Snape stride off with Dumbledore, talking in low serious tones.

 

Harry only finds out who Black is, really, from Moody. “Dunno why nobody thought to tell you,” Moody says, digging out his wallet. They’re in the same dungeon classroom now, waiting for Neville to arrive from dinner. “Not just any Knight. The Black line had always been dark, but Sirius had been the first of them sorted into Gryffindor. He ended up best friends with your da, see?” He’s extracted a photo, handing it to Harry.

And then Moody tells him everything else, about the Fidelius charm and how Sirius had been the Secret Keeper, betraying Harry’s parents at the last moment. “Voldemort couldn’t have gotten in without him,” Moody says. “Not even if he was standing there looking in the windows, he wouldn’t have been able to see it. It’s a powerful spell.”

And as Harry listens, he’s studying the photo. The fashions within it are old, the loose clothing and jewel tones of the 1970s. Harry sees his parents immediately, off to one side but surrounded by a group of other twenty year olds. “Black’s behind them,” Moody says, pointing. “Then that’s Remus Lupin, Peter Pettigrew – Black killed Pettigrew in the end, he’d gone to confront Black the next day, and Black exploded the entire street and all of Pettigrew himself. Twelve Muggles dead. It was a disaster.”

 _The Order of the Phoenix, 1979_ reads the handwriting along the bottom. Harry looks into Black’s handsome face, and Pettigrew’s soft innocent one. “Does the Order of the Phoenix still exist?”

“It should, shouldn’t it.” Moody settles against the front desk, kicking out his fake leg and grinding his knuckles into his aching thigh. “There’s some of us still in touch. Dumbledore is… reluctant,” he says slowly, “for reasons of his own.”

Dumbledore had convened the Order to begin with, Harry knows that. “He doesn’t think it’s needed?”

“Oh, it is. But the Ministry is watching Dumbledore more closely this time than last. He needs to keep his nose clean.”

Before Harry can interrogate this, the door creaks open and Neville lets himself in. “Hi. Am I late?”

“No.” Moody heaves himself off the desk, taking up his staff.

And Neville comes to stand beside Harry. “Oh. Black’s in that one, right?” He’s looking at the photo like he’s seen it before.

“Yeah. Just there.” He didn’t look so different now, Harry reflects – his face was gaunt but otherwise had the same structure, and the long hair that was tied back in the photo had hung in greasy strands when he’d faced Harry. Of course he looked much older than thirty-four, but half a lifetime in prison would do that, he supposed.

“And your parents. God, they’re all young.”

“And yours?” Harry asks. Neville nods, pointing at a couple squeezed into a stuffed armchair together, the woman laughing as the man wraps her long hair around his finger. And Harry knows this was taken deep into the war, when they’d lost friends and they weren’t sure they would defeat Voldemort at all, but… it looks like a moment of respite. He’s happy for them.

“Keep it,” Moody says gruffly, when Harry looks up again. “Got loads like it. But you don’t.”

“Are you sure – “

“Yes. Wands out, both of you.”

 

They work. It’s not a bad evening. And by the time Harry and Neville are released, the castle is quiet, as curfew has been imposed even now that Hogwarts is cleared and Black is gone.

It’s a long, quiet walk back. And then Neville asks, “Are you scared?”

“Of Black? No.” Somehow he seemed more proximate than Voldemort. “Are you?”

“… No,” Neville says. “I mean, not anymore.” And then, reaching over, he slips his warm hand into Harry’s.

It’s really, really nice. Neville has been his ally in ways nobody else could possibly be, and it’s just… good. “Oh,” Harry murmurs, and he doesn’t do anything further, but only keeps his hand clasped in Neville’s as they walk back to Gryffindor tower.

Being fourteen and inexperienced in these matters, nothing more happens that night. It’s enough. And the next time Harry tries to cast a Patronus, it coalesces into something a bit more solid than he’d ever managed before.

 

Somehow, the rest of that school year is quiet. Black is hiding out somewhere, Dumbledore says gravely, but Harry will be safe over the summer as long as he spends the first month with the Dursleys. “Then come stay with us,” Ron says as they’re packing their trunks in the sticky warmth of June.

“If I can,” Harry says doubtfully. “I mean – Dumbledore said it was fine. But my aunt and uncle – “

“Are tossers,” Ron says firmly. There’s a snort in the direction of Seamus’s bed. “Tell them you’ve got a lunatic after you, they probably can’t wait to kick you out after that.”

“Yeah, alright.”

There’s the closing feast, the final breakfast, the last carriage ride to the train. Harry has promised separately to write to Neville and Moody and Ron and Hermione. He can almost shake off the chill of the Dementors as they pass through Hogsmeade.

\---

Tom spends the first two weeks of summer holidays in the castle. Dumbledore fusses at him, as per usual, that he should get outside and see the world while his body is still young. (God, if only he knew.) And as usual, Tom deflects these anxieties, taking long mornings and late nights to read and study and brew slightly illicit potions.

He has had all the Knights report back but Rookwood. Bella had told him that Potter’s Muggle mother’s sister would take him in over the summers, which he had found out for himself. Macnair was sowing dissent with Fudge’s office; Carrow had managed to keep the Dementors on the Hogwarts campus against Dumbledore’s wishes. Tom is pleased.

But then… the link between him and Potter remains a mystery. The dreams, the aversion to touch, the bloody _Parseltongue_. He disillusions these books at the back of his bookshelves, but they have not yet been useful.

At the end of June, he is summoned by Rookwood. At last, at last he may hold the prophecy that would have destroyed him. Rookwood is abroad, somewhere in Germany. So Tom tells the faculty he is traveling to see a friend, and he leaves for Hogsmeade. A series of floos and apparition points lest he is being followed, and then he draws his typical glamour over himself, and then he opens the connection in Parseltongue to follow the snake to Rookwood’s summons.

He ends up in the back garden of an overgrown manor. Perhaps abandoned, perhaps just ill-kempt. Perhaps the home had belonged to someone Rookwood had killed and he now used it as a safehouse. That was the only reason Tom hadn’t burned down his father’s manor, anyway.

Letting himself in, he draws his wand. The home is suspiciously quiet. His _hominem revelio_ comes back with a single entity on the manor’s upper floor. He climbs the stairs.

And when he turns toward the source, toward a great glass door at the end of the corridor – there’s a shot to his back and he’s frozen, wand clattering out of his grip. There’s a hand across his mouth and someone leaning in close behind him. “Tom,” says Grindelwald, his accent sharp and mocking as it always was. “You’ve been seeking some very curious answers. We have quite a lot to speak about, I think.”

He does not release Tom. Instead, barely pausing to summon Tom’s wand from the carpet, he drags his immobilized form down the hallway. The glass doors open to a great library, where Grindelwald drops Tom onto a sofa and takes an adjacent one himself. “Ah, he will not wake,” he says, glancing at Rookwood’s unconscious body draped across a bench on the far side of the room. “So we must take off your ridiculous _costume_.”

And then Grindelwald is leaning in, much nearer than is necessary, to peel off Tom’s glamour with the tip of his own wand. “Better,” he pronounces when Tom – not Voldemort – is glaring back at him. A patronizing little pat on his cheek, and then he presses Tom’s wand in his grasp before releasing him. “Don’t do anything stupid,” he warns. “I think we can be of very great help to one another.”

\---

Harry reads more of the Mind Magicks book. He learns that Occlumency is done by clearing the mind, and clearing the mind is done by accepting and dismissing every thought as it occurs. Theoretically, it’s peaceful. In practical terms, he still hears his mother – and now, sometimes, his father – whenever the Dementors or boggarts come close.

But he reads about Legilimency too, and how a Legilimens can force their way into people’s minds. And… Voldemort has been quiet, and Harry is so curious….

It’s a few weeks into summer holidays when he falls asleep wishing he could find a way in. And then his dream has got that texture, the one that makes it… real. In a sense.

The last time he’d found his way into Voldemort’s dreams, he’d seen the Crouch boy. This may not be so immediately helpful – the scene is unresolved, a generic stone passageway –

And then it shifts. “Harry.”

Voldemort’s voice is cold but his tone is… familiar. There is a certain inevitability to their being together, and it falls short of warmth but it’s something. Harry turns to find Voldemort’s spindly figure and bone-white face behind him.

And now the scene is coalescing into something more distinct, something shadowy with high ceilings and niches in the walls. “Do you live here?” Harry asks.

A smile curls Voldemort’s thin mouth. “Really, it is rude enough to break into someone’s mind – yes, you did,” he interrupts when Harry is about to protest. “Why deny it? – But it is unspeakably rude to simply _ask_ for such intelligence on an opponent. But no, I don’t live here. This is a corridor within the Ministry.”

“… Why?” He knows from reading about Legilimency that it would typically retrieve memories – or dreams or whatever – nearer to a person’s conscious state. If Voldemort has broken into the Ministry, they are already fucked.

“Our prophecy lies beyond this door.” As he speaks the words, a great door carves itself out of the end of the corridor. “Haven’t you been curious about it?” He takes in Harry’s expression, even as he attempts to look neutral. “Or has Dumbledore not told you?”

“What good is a prophecy?” Harry scoffs. “Not like it can change anything.”

“You simple boy, I attempted to kill you because of this prophecy. Dumbledore really has told you nothing, then,” Voldemort marvels.

And Harry is thinking quickly, trying to remember why people thought Voldemort had gone to kill his family. Because it was a war; because James and Lily had been powerful; because the Light’s soldiers had recently taken down two powerful Knights and it had been retaliation. “Prophecies are bollocks,” he says. “And if _that’s_ why you nearly got yourself killed….”

He speaks this way because it’s only a dream, and they both know it. At least, until Voldemort steps in, cornering Harry against a sleek obsidian wall. “ _Gryffindor_ ,” he says. “You have forgotten that not only _can_ I hurt you in this realm, but I _have_.” Reaching low, he wraps his long fingers around Harry’s wrist, where immediately his flesh burns, sharp pains shooting up to his elbow. Still, Harry doesn’t jerk away. “Do you not believe magic will work as well? That I could kill you in your bed the next time you invaded my mind?”

“If you wanted to, you’d have already done it.” Finally he wrenches his wrist from Voldemort’s grasp. There are individual fingermarks inflamed in red upon his skin. “You need me for this – prophecy, then.”

“Yes.”

“And then what?”

“Then we will both know how the war will end.”

It’s not any sort of promise. “I want actual peace,” Harry says. “I want all my friends to have a normal life.”

Voldemort hums. “ _That_ sort of agreement requires a vow, with a bonder. So until you learn how to smuggle another wizard in with you….”

“I don’t trust you.”

“Nor should you,” Voldemort agrees. “Return with the prophecy, and I may arrange something.”

Harry won’t say anything that may sound like acquiescence, but they both know that it is. He steps away, in the direction where the dream had begun. “And next time you want to come kill me, do it yourself,” he adds, simply out of spite. “Sending Black was cowardice, and he was shit at it anyway.”

“Sirius Black came of his own volition.”

“Bullshit.”

Voldemort spreads his hands, as though he can’t compel Harry to believe anything. “Goodnight, Harry.”

He knows he shouldn’t turn his back on Voldemort, but he does anyway. Voldemort lets him go.

\---

Voldemort wakes in Grindelwald’s manor – or, well, the manor he has commandeered – a short time later. He has been here for nearly a week, not quite a prisoner but also not free to go. Grindelwald says he must remain here while some battles are fought elsewhere, but do not worry, he will be released before the Hogwarts term starts.

Potter had merely stumbled into his mind; nobody was teaching the boy Legilimency. Really, he thinks Potter has told nobody of the extent of their connection. Not Moody, certainly not Dumbledore. It is… curious.

And he does need the prophecy. Rookwood had dithered and failed and run to Grindelwald for assistance in his task, which is how he’d come to be spelled unconscious in Grindelwald’s library just after summoning Voldemort. There was no way for anyone but the prophecy’s subjects to take it from its shelf, so – it had to be Potter. Voldemort had Obliviated Rookwood; Grindelwald had apparated his body to a part of London he’d be loath to admit he’d ever visited; and now Rookwood may return to his Ministry position without divulging anything.

Grindelwald wants the Knights for himself. He wants Britain for himself, and with Dumbledore more hindered by Ministry surveillance than he’d been last time, this seems plausible. Voldemort has not agreed to anything yet, but Grindelwald has made clear he will hold him here until he does.

He also doesn’t know that he is strong enough to resist Grindelwald. Either magically or… strategically. Grindelwald has only just stopped short of blackmailing _Tom_. He knows of his double life. He knows of the magic of Horcruces, and at least suspects that Voldemort has created some. He knows that Tom has been seeking out information on Parseltongue. Whether he’s learned anything of Potter yet… well, Voldemort is not in a position to rebel against Grindelwald, regardless.

\---

It wouldn’t be for many weeks later that Harry wonders how Voldemort had known that the burns he’d left on Harry’s wrist had remained there when the dream had ended.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hey I should have said this three chapters ago, but come find me on tumblr [here](https://sofiabanefics.tumblr.com/). I post an embarrassing amount about Voldemort kthx.


	5. Chapter 5

“I do wish you hadn’t killed Karkaroff,” Grindelwald says without preamble as he enters the manor late one evening. “He was weak, but he would have been useful.”

Voldemort clicks his tongue. “He wasn’t useful to _me_. Except perhaps as a warning.”

“You’ve done little to gather international allies otherwise.”

Voldemort hates this. He hates Grindelwald, he hates being spoken to as a child. Grindelwald had brought back news yesterday that the vampires are converging on the German ministry to spread British forces too thin. Dumbledore has sent out giants – Hagrid and Olympia Maxime, Beauxbaton’s headmistress – to gain the British giants’ alliance before Grindelwald did. “And the Knights will force Dumbledore and Fudge out,” Grindelwald concludes. “I want Britain, but you may have Hogwarts.” And in that moment Voldemort wants to curse him dead.

But Grindelwald is useful. They are useful to one another. And when Grindelwald _releases_ him after another few days, it is with a mild, “Give Albus my best.”

“Your relationship is abhorrent.”

An indulgent smile from Grindelwald. “Ah, what is love without a little antagonism? Maybe one day you will understand.”

“I hope not.” And with that, Voldemort strips off his glamours – they made no difference, but he would prefer to be _Voldemort_ in Grindelwald’s presence instead of _Tom._ Stepping into the garden, he apparates.

Grindelwald had uncovered the Knights’ plans already. But he said he did not understand how Tom’s research on Parseltongue was relevant. And he has never asked about Harry. And Voldemort is strangely relieved at it.

 

It’s only a day later when Tom makes the discovery, of hidden runes encircling his wrists. He had been obligated to look when the security wards of Hogwarts had tugged peculiarly at him, sending shooting pains up his forearms. With a well-placed Revelio Arcana (which is not nearly secure enough, it’s the first spell the Aurors check, for fuck’s sake), Tom finds the neat Germanic runes that Grindelwald had placed on him sometime in the prior week. An injunction: if he uses his magic against Grindelwald in any way, he will lose it.

Of course Grindelwald had let him go after that. He thinks bitterly of the Muggle practice of tagging an animal before releasing it back into the wild. And removing the runes would themselves constitute opposition to Grindelwald, he finds as he goes sick at his first attempt. God _damn_ him.

Hypothetically, it should not matter. He and Grindelwald are better suited to be allies than enemies. But Grindelwald…. He quite enjoys playing with his food, enemy and ally alike. Gritting his teeth and spelling the runes invisible again, Tom wonders the extent of his surveillance, and whether there are any dark arts bookshops in Britain he may still visit in secret.

\---

Harry spends not quite one month at the Dursleys’ that summer. Dudley had gotten strong, Vernon bitter, and Harry thinks he would rather be dead than in this house a moment later. Dumbledore has never bothered to explain to him the point of staying with this miserable family anyway, so – he doesn’t. One dark night there’s a terrible fight, and he storms out, dragging his trunk behind him. His mouth is still full of blood.

Ron. Neville. Hermione. He doesn’t know how to contact them – or, well, he’s got Hedwig with him, but he’s got no idea what to do immediately. He probably looks like a nutter, dragging his chest down the suburban streets of Surrey at ten at night.

But the adrenaline of the fight hasn’t yet worn off, so when he hears the rustle of something behind him, he whips around, ready to fight. But it’s only a big black dog – a stray, he assumes, though that’s unusual in this neighborhood – slipping into a thick hydrangea brush.

But Harry hovers with his wand out for so long that the Knight Bus squeals around the corner. And with nowhere else to go this late, he asks them to bring him to Diagon Alley.

From his room at the Leaky Cauldron, Harry writes to Ron, leaving out most of the Dursleys’ treatment of him because Ron already knows – well, enough. And then, after opening the window to let Hedwig out, he falls into an uneasy sleep.

Nobody comes for him the next day, or the next. Really, he’s got to be safer among wizards than Muggles anyway, because how the hell is he supposed to defend himself against Voldemort without drawing his wand? His birthday is only a few days from now, and then he’s only got to stay through August, and Tom the barkeeper has got a cheap monthly rate already posted…. He wanders the shops during the day, eating ice cream at Fortesque’s as he does his homework, and he mails Neville a burping sapling for a birthday gift.

He’d expected someone to show up soon – Hagrid, McGonagall, Flitwick? Not Dumbledore himself, who was aloof and quite busy with Grindelwald’s apparent return.

But he does not expect it to be Professor Riddle.

It’s the morning of his birthday and he’s got no great plans for it – cinnamon rolls for breakfast, then maybe going to the pet shop to visit their talking snakes. But he’s barely out of the Leaky Cauldron’s door when a gloved hand falls upon his shoulder. “Mr. Potter.”

Whirling around, he’s already got his wand out – and then he’s looking into Professor Riddle’s mildly surprised expression. “Sorry, sir,” he mutters, shoving his wand back into his jeans. “Habit.”

“A wise one. Albus is sick with worry.”

 _If he were, he wouldn’t have left me with those awful people to begin with_. “Oh,” Harry says instead, attempting to arrange his face into something like guilt. Half of his mouth is still swollen from being hit, so he sucks his lip in to make it less noticeable. “I didn’t think it was his problem. Especially since he’s so busy.”

“Thus I’ve been deputized. Come this way.”

Professor Riddle buys him a coffee against Harry’s protestations, and they end up at a booth in the rear of the coffee shop. “I’m not going back,” Harry says immediately. “I’ll stay anywhere else.”

Riddle is looking at his face full-on for the first time, then draws his wand. “Episkey,” he says, and the swell of Harry’s lips and gums is gone. He doesn’t otherwise acknowledge it, thank fuck, but instead goes on: “Then you may be pleased to know that the feeling is apparently mutual. Your family did not contact Dumbledore – or anyone else – until Mrs. Weasley wrote to him about you.”

Molly. They all invested more trust in Dumbledore than Harry himself did. He’d spent enough time with Moody, learning about the first war, to know Dumbledore made bargains when he needed to. “I want to stay with Ron,” he says. “If I can.”

“You may, though at some cost to them. It’s fine,” Riddle says when Harry opens his mouth. “They have already said it’s fine. I have been dispatched to accompany you there. And to ask what possibly catalyzed running away into a world where you are fifteen and alone while Sirius Black wants you dead.”

Harry gives him a curious look. “And Voldemort.”

“Indeed.”

Twisting his napkin between his fingers: “They just… I had to get out. They don’t want me there.”

“Hm,” Riddle says, as though this is confirmation of something, something more than just Harry showing up with a swollen mouth this morning. But Harry thinks sometimes that Riddle must be a Legilimens, for the times he is slightly _too_ well-informed about Harry. But they’re not going to talk about it today, and for that Harry is grateful.

They must negotiate logistics a bit: there’s nothing else Harry needs from the Dursleys’ home, and if there is, he will ask one of the elder Weasleys to accompany him. He will write to Professor McGonagall directly, should anything significant happen. And he will stay put until the school year begins, at which time he will let Molly and Arthur drop him off at the train station with all of their other children.

“Have you taken a Portkey before?” Riddle asks, as they’re walking back toward the Leaky Cauldron.

“Ah… no, sir.”

“A method of transport. It may be… disorienting, at first. I’ve been instructed to ensure you reach your destination regardless, but – “ He pulls out a pocket watch. “This is how we’re traveling.”

It looks normal. “I’ll bring my trunk down,” Harry says. And after telling Hedwig to meet him at the Burrow, and checking out with the barkeep, he drags his trunk before Riddle. And when Riddle peels off his typical leather gloves to offer the other half of the watch to Harry, he has the very stupid thought that Riddle’s hands are really nice. And then there’s the jerk behind his navel, which may be the portkey and may be… something else.

They arrive at the Burrow, and immediately Harry is wrapped in Molly’s arms. “Harry dear, you’ve scared everyone to death…!”

A flush of guilt goes through him. “Sorry, I didn’t mean to. Just….”

But whatever lies he’d tell are lost in Molly’s bosom anyway, and then he’s ushered inside. “And this is Professor Riddle,” he says, gesturing as Riddle tucks the watch back into his robes.

“Of course. Thank you for bringing him. Stay for tea? Toast?”

“No thank you. Albus wanted me back as soon as I had dropped Harry off.”

Molly clicks her tongue. “How is he? Every day I think the Ministry will be the death of him.”

Riddle doesn’t seem moved by the transgression of this statement. “He is stronger than he looks. I’ll bring him your best.” And with that he draws a pale wand, ready to apparate.

“Thanks,” Harry says, because saying nothing would be weird. “You didn’t have to do this.”

Nearly a smile at Riddle’s mouth. “I assure you, I did.”

“Well, you didn’t need to get me a coffee, then.”

“Yes, well. Happy birthday, Harry.” With that, he apparates. And Harry runs upstairs, to where Ron and Ginny are crouched, listening from the landing.

 

Two very big things happen that summer. The first is that, a week after Harry’s birthday, Vernon and Petunia are found dead in their car in their church’s car park. There is no cause the Muggles can discern, but of course the wizards know it was Voldemort’s doing, that he’d come looking for Harry and killed Vernon and Petunia when he hadn’t found him. “Terrifying,” Molly sniffs into a handkerchief when Dumbledore writes them with the news. “It’s a good thing you got out when you did – a week later, and you might have – “ And then her voice chokes up, too much to speak.

And Harry can say nothing to anyone, because they all expect him to grieve and he just – can’t. He goes back one afternoon, to gather anything else out of the house and somehow say sorry to Dudley, who hadn’t been with them at the time, and is now being sent to live with Aunt Marge. And Harry aches to tell him chin up, that now he can experience all the shitty things he’s said about orphans for himself; but in the end they say nothing to each other. Harry clears the detritus from his (“his”) bedroom and goes.

He gets a letter from Moody, from all people, who tells him that Dumbledore had cast protective spells around the house at 4 Privet Drive specifically, and he’s in a tizzy that Harry will have nowhere to go during the summers, even though it should obviously be Hogwarts. _Not that he’s got to do anything about it until next summer_ , Moody writes plainly. _Until then, don’t go out alone, don’t trust strangers. You know how not to be stupid._

This makes Harry smile. And thank god Moody doesn’t offer his condolences. He understands too much for that.

The other thing that happens – well, Harry doesn’t quite heed Moody’s advice.

He and Ron are out in the garden in the late afternoon, kicking around a football while they wait for everyone else to get home from the market. And then there’s a noise in the blackberry bushes and the copse of trees beyond. And then there’s a massive black dog bounding out, jumping on Ron and biting down on his collar to drag him away.

“Hey – fuck—geroff – “ And Ron is kicking at the dog, and Harry is running up, and _goddammit_ he hasn’t even brought his wand along –

The dog drags Ron into the trees, where it is dark and isolated. And just when Harry’s grabbed a branch to swing at the dog – “Harry! Stop!”

It’s an unfamiliar voice, but Harry looks up to see an adult in ragged clothing, running through the trees. “Sirius – for fuck’s sake, we weren’t doing it like this – “ And he’s dragging the dog off Ron, wrestling it since the dog’s jaws are still locked at Ron’s collar.

And Ron is significantly hurt – there’s a deep gash along his forehead where he must have hit a rock, and his arms and back have been scratched up by the underbrush – but as soon as the man runs up, he’s trying to stagger to his feet. “Werewolf,” he grunts, still shoving at the dog’s hide. “Did Greyback send you?”

This gives the man pause. “No. But that’s quite a good guess.”

“You’ve all got a look – _ow_ ,” Ron protests as the dog’s jaws graze at his collarbone, and with a swift kick to its chest he finally gets it off him.

The man grabs the dog’s scruff. “Padfoot – Sirius – for fucks’ sake he is going to get away – “

And then the dog’s shape warps, flesh emerging from under the dark coat of fur, and then Sirius Black stands before them. He’s not even looking at Harry. “Your rat,” he says to Ron in a ragged voice. “Give him to me.”

Ron slaps a hand over his breast pocket, where Scabbers had been asleep before and is now squeaking in panic. “My _rat_?” His voice cracks in disbelief.

“Your rat is also an Animagus,” Remus says, and this means nothing to Harry but everything to Ron, who immediately wrenches Scabbers from his pocket, thrusting him into Remus’s hands.

And a minute later Peter Pettigrew cowers before them in chains. “Re-Remus. Sirius. You look well.”

Sirius backhands him.

Harry still doesn’t understand everything that’s going on, but he recognizes these names from the photo of the Order that Moody had given to him, and then Remus says he’s back in touch with Moody anyway, and then they drag Pettigrew back into the house so they might use the floo.

Moody arrives through the floo just before Molly and Arthur and Ginny arrive through the front door; and the sight of an Auror, a werewolf, a convict and a presumed dead man in her living room makes Molly wilt onto the sofa in a daze.

And then… well, Pettigrew is taken away. And Sirius can’t be freed immediately, on the books, Moody says, but if he doesn’t report Sirius’s whereabouts to the Ministry until the next morning anyway…. “Good to have you back,” Moody says gruffly, clapping Sirius on the shoulder before stepping into the floo.

So that’s how they end up around the Weasleys’ dinner table, as Sirius recounts finding out Pettigrew was alive (a chance photo of the Weasley family at their campsite from last year’s Quidditch world cup) and getting into the castle. “I thought I was going to die that night,” Ron says, his grip tight on his fork.

“You? No.” Sirius attempts to make his sallow face into a soft smile. “Sorry for scaring you.”

And Fred and George, who had let themselves in later and taken quite well to the chaos of their home, guffaw. “Ron was never more popular,” George assures Sirius, as he flicks a pea at Ron. “You’re fine.”

Meanwhile Harry is… watching. Sirius and Remus are connections to the past, tot hat photo of the Order he’s still got in his wallet. He is hungry for everything they’ve got to tell him.

Over the course of the conversation, he figures out that the Order has been reconvened – that Dumbledore can’t be very hands-on about it, so Moody’s got people together instead, and this is where Molly and Arthur, and Fred and George, had met Remus before. And as Ron realizes his family all likes and trusts Remus, his posture slumps. “Sorry for calling you a werewolf,” he mutters.

An actual laugh from Remus. “I _am_ a werewolf,” he says lightly. “I do everything I can for Dumbledore, because most of them… well, Voldemort’s offered them more than the Ministry ever has.” ( _He says Voldemort too_ , Harry files away.) “Greyback wants to mobilize his pack into fighting again, when it comes to it.”

“I want to be in the Order,” Harry blurts out.

Remus pauses, but Sirius laughs. “Of course you do,” he says, and his tone goes warmer than it’s been all night. “Your parents could hardly wait to get out of school, because Dumbledore wouldn’t let students fight. I expect he still won’t.”

“Voldemort wants to kill _me_ ,” Harry says hotly. (Across the table, Molly lets out a whimper of protest.) “I should at least be allowed to fight back.”

Sirius gives him a curious look. “Yeah,” he says. “You should.”

They end up in the living room, before the fireplace, because Sirius says the cold of Azkaban has not yet left his bones. The way they sit, the way they look at each other – Sirius and Remus are _together_ together, and it somehow puts Harry at ease to think they are like him.

Sirius lifts a beer to his lips. “I wanted to come for your birthday, but the timing wasn’t right. When I’ve got access to my vaults again, let me get you something, to make up for all the years I’ve missed. Been a rather negligent godfather.”

Harry’s heart stutters. “Godfather,” he echoes.

And Sirius slaps a hand to his forehead. “They didn’t tell you? I guess I haven’t mentioned it either. Yeah. …If you want,” he adds, a self-conscious note breaking his brash presentation.

“Yeah,” Harry says, going warm with happiness. “I mean – thanks. I’d like that.”

Eventually Sirius and Remus depart, back to Remus’s flat. “Though the next time the Order meets, it’ll probably be at my mum’s house,” Sirius says darkly, and Harry can’t inquire about it now but he feels like Sirius also understands what it’s like, growing up somewhere you hate. But then Sirius is grabbing him in a hug, fierce and a little wild. “See you around, kiddo,” he murmurs, as though they share a secret. And Harry can’t stop smiling for the rest of the night.

 

And then… there’s Voldemort. Harry expects to find him in sleep that summer, after the Dursleys’ death, so he may gloat or whatever. But they never do. Voldemort is quiet, even as often as Harry picks at their mental connection.

So when Bill offers to take Harry to the Ministry to pick up Arthur from work one night, he jumps at the chance. His prophecy is in there, somewhere. And if he can figure out how to get to it – maybe he can save everyone from Voldemort.

Ron comes along, though he’s clearly not so impressed by the golden fountain or the fluttering inter-departmental memos overhead as Harry is. “Who’s that girl you were chatting up earlier?” he asks as they get into a golden lift.

“Fleur,” Bill says happily. “She’s from Beauxbatons.”

“Yeah, no kidding. _Oh, Bill eez so clever wiz numbers_ ,” Ron mimics in a terrible accent. Bill grins back, unabashed.

But Harry is studying the lift’s buttons. _Floor 7, Department of Magical Games and Sports. Floor 8, Reception. For Floor 9, the Department of Mysteries, please use stairway access_ , reads the printed plaque.

“The Department of Mysteries,” Harry says. “That’s where all the prophecies are kept, aren’t they?”

They follow his gaze. “It’s where a lot of things are kept,” Bill says. “All this research into love, death, time. But yeah, the hall of prophecies is down there. You’re in Divination with Ron, then?” he guesses, getting Harry’s interest credibly wrong.

“Yeah, we are.”

“Trelawney is _wild_ ,” Bill says fondly. “I don’t know how Dumbledore keeps her around. – Oh, here we are. To your left, Harry.” They get out of the lift. And Harry’s not sure how he’s going to get back here, but – he’s got to come back.

 

And then they’re boarding the train for their fifth year. Harry had hoped Sirius could come see him off at King’s Cross, but what they’d heard from Moody was that breaking out of Azkaban apparently did not count as due process, that Sirius could apparently be charged with _that_ even if he was innocent of the crime that originally put him there. Still, Pettigrew had confessed to everything under Veritaserum already; and Sirius is apparently hiding out in his parents’ heavily warded home while Moody and Dumbledore attempted to sort out his innocence. Harry gets a note of well wishes from Sirius and Remus instead, and he tucks it into his back pocket on the morning of September 1.

They find Hermione and Neville already on the train. Neville’s grown at least three inches over the summer, and he gives Harry a bright smile as they enter the train’s cabin. “Hi. How’s your summer?”

They don’t know, Harry realizes. News of the Dursleys had only been circulated as necessary, to the Hogwarts faculty and Aurors and Weasleys. That Harry had run away at all, that Voldemort had just missed him, that Professor Riddle had been obligated to come track him down from Diagon Alley. “Good,” he says instead. “Really good. Yours?”

A shrug. “Gran went to Algeria for a fortnight and left me to plant-sit. It was quiet then.”

“Good.”

And Hermione is looking shrewdly between them. “And how was your time with the Weasleys, Harry?”

She is dying to know what precipitated it, and he’ll tell her, later. “Fred and George gave me oatmeal in an exploding bowl one morning. Percy won’t shut up about cauldron bottoms. But I think Mrs. Weasley loves me even more than she loves Ron,” he says with a grin in Ron’s direction. “So pretty good.”

“Yeah, yeah. I’ll just move in with the ghoul, shall I?”

“Aw, Ron, that’s so sweet,” Ginny coos, and Ron lobs a jelly legs jinx in her direction.

As the train lurches out of the station, their cabin door slides open. “May I join you?” Luna asks, adjusting some garish pink and blue spectacles to better peer at them. “Everywhere else is full, or occupied by hostile entities.”

“Hi Luna,” Ginny says, scooting on the bench. “Come in.”

She does, handing them each a magazine printed in bright purple ink. “Dad just put out the newest edition of the Quibbler,” she explains happily. “We wanted to get news of the werewolf plot to block out the moon, before the Daily Prophet ran it.”

“There is no werewolf plot to block out the moon,” Hermione says in a brittle voice.

Luna clicks her tongue. “That’s what they want you to think.”

Everyone in the car but Harry and Hermione are purebloods, and apparently already acquainted with the Quibbler, but Harry looks through the tabloid in wonder, while Hermione reads in fury. “Dad asked if you would do an interview, Harry,” Luna tells him as he flips the Quibbler upside to read its article on moonseed poisoning. “Since the Prophet will never run an article about the return of You Know Who.”

“… They won’t?”

“No, never. Cornelius Fudge is deep in denial, and you know he pays off the editors.”

Harry hadn’t noticed that the papers were quiet about Voldemort. “But – the Aurors saw him. The Knights are broken out. Karkaroff is dead.” _And so are my aunt and uncle, thank god._

A small shrug. “He’s blamed Grindelwald so far. But really, every time Dad sends him a request for comment, his office writes back that he’s _promoting hysteria_.”

Looking at the Quibbler, Harry must admit it seems at least a bit hysterical. Still, he’s curious. “I haven’t seen him for myself, really. I just know, that… well, I know he’s not dead, anyway.”

“Think about it,” Luna says, and pushes her blue and pink glasses into her hair.

 

Hogwarts is breathtaking, as always. The feast is good, though not such a relief now that Harry’s coming from a month of Mrs. Weasley’s cooking instead of a summer of the Dursleys’ starvation. Dumbledore delivers a welcoming speech that acknowledges neither Voldemort nor Grindelwald. Harry finds himself disappointed.

On the way out of the Great Hall, Harry falls in step with Riddle by chance. Since he can’t avoid it: “Hi, sir.”

“How was your summer?” Riddle asks, with a glance.

As though he doesn’t know. And somehow, Harry is grateful for this bit of privacy, this kindness. “Good. Really good. Yours?”

“Yes,” Riddle says. And when they part, a sort of warmth lingers in Harry’s stomach. He can’t think about it, yet.

 

As it’s the year of their OWLs, the students all get lectured on the first day of classes about taking their education seriously now. “And if any of you intend to go on to NEWTs level Potions – though I can’t fathom why you would,” Snape glowers at them, “know that I only take Outstanding marks.” Harry sees Hermione square her shoulders. And he’s not thrilled with this either, but McGonagall had already told him that Aurors need a NEWT in Potions, so if that’s still his intended career, he would do well to put extra attention into Snape’s class this year.

Transfiguration, Charms. Defense, in which Riddle also tells them he will only take Outstanding marks but somehow makes it sound less cruel than Snape had. And when he asks that anyone intending to go on to NEWTs level Defense see him at the end of class, Harry is one of the handful who stays behind. “I want to be an Auror,” he says, emboldened by a good class of jinxes.

Riddle’s mouth quirks. “I know you do,” he says. And the familiarity makes Harry’s head swim.

Still, he’s got Neville. They walk together to the lessons Moody is still giving them, a week after the term begins, and split a chocolate bar afterward because they are back on Dementors, _again_.

“The Ministry fully intends to put their entire security panel in the castle,” Moody says as Harry glowers at the boggart’s chest. “And get Dumbledore removed while they’re at it.”

“Gran says Dumbledore is all that’s keeping You Know Who from Hogwarts,” Neville says, rolling his wand between his palms.

“Dunno why Voldemort’s always avoided Dumbledore. Guess it doesn’t matter, the reason. But no, Voldemort won’t fight him.”

“Then – taking him out of Hogwarts – “

“It’s shit,” Moody says brusquely. “We’ll do everything we can, but the Ministry is scared and stupid now. As always.”

Neither of them point out that Moody _is_ the Ministry, that the Aurors’ department is his responsibility. These sort of transgressive statements have crept into their meetings and correspondence over the past year, as though Moody were testing them. And now that Harry knows the Order is reconvening, now that he desperately wants to be a part of it, it makes sense. Harry finds Dumbledore himself mysterious and distant, but being on Dumbledore’s side, on the side of justice and dissidence, appeals to him a lot.

Anyway, he already knows it won’t be the _Ministry_ that defeats Voldemort.

 

It’s probably this line of thought that leads him back into Voldemort’s mind that night.

It’s not the Department of Mysteries this time. The stonework looks like Hogwarts, with one wall displaced by a full window pane underwater. The Slytherin common room, Harry guesses, or something like it.

Voldemort seems irritated to see him in his mind. “You haven’t brought the prophecy.”

“You killed my aunt and uncle.”

A quirk of his mouth. “Yes, but what has _that_ got to do with anything?”

“Nothing. Thank you. I guess.” He’s still not entirely certain whether this dream is his manifestation or Voldemort’s, so he’s looking around at their surroundings, until Voldemort makes a noise of disbelief behind him. He looks back. “What?”

“ _Thank you_?”

“… Yeah, sure.” He doesn’t want to get into it with bloody Voldemort, how relieved he is to not live with the Dursleys anymore. “I was already gone by then, though. Oh, and they never took me to church. They said I was incorrigible. So,” a lopsided smile. “Try harder next time.”

Voldemort’s hand twitches for his wand instinctively, Harry sees the fraction of the movement. Then he stops himself. “You are quite incorrigible,” he agrees. “As though you’ve forgotten I can hurt you here.”

“You said you wouldn’t kill me at Hogwarts,” Harry says. “Which I am. Both actually, and….” He gestures around them. “Whatever this is. Were you in Slytherin?”

“Yes.” Voldemort has settled into a plush armchair, looking regal.

“Figured. With all the Knights in Slytherin as well.” He’s wandering near the window now, wondering if  this dream could possibly include mermaids. “Were you here with Dumbledore on faculty already?”

“Dumbledore has been on faculty since the beginning of the twentieth century.”

Harry thinks Voldemort might be offended. It is… delightful. “Like I know how old you are. With… that.” He gestures, rudely, to the façade of Voldemort’s face, the mask made flesh. “I just heard you won’t duel him, and I thought you might’ve had it in for him since school.”

“Dumbledore is quite preoccupied with his erstwhile lover at the moment, and has no business dueling me.”

Harry about chokes on his tongue. “His _lover_?”

A smirk mars Voldemort’s blank face. “Didn’t you know?” he purrs. “He was quite taken with Grindelwald when they were young. They were meant to rule the world together, subjugating Muggles for the _greater good_. It’s an embarrassment to him now, to be sure, but that’s why the Ministry doesn’t entirely trust him this time around.” He takes in Harry’s expression, which must be one of ill-concealed surprise. “I don’t know how any of them expect you to fight if they’re not honest with you.”

Harry pulls his shoulders back, composing himself. “They don’t expect me to fight. But I’m going to anyway.”

“You precious, stupid child. What value do you think the _Boy Who Lived_ has to them but as an eventual savior?”

He wants to deny it, that he’s the savior at all. But really, he’d like to be. Otherwise what is he even doing in these dreams, playing with fire and consorting with his fated enemy. “Good,” he says instead. “Then I’ll fight. Not for the Ministry. But against you.”

“I look forward to publicly making an example of you. Or don’t you know what we did to Karkaroff’s body?”

Karkaroff had been found facedown in a stream, the word _coward_ carved into his chest with a severing charm. But somehow, death doesn’t scare Harry now. “Yeah, and it’s disgusting. Seems that you’re a bit of a coward yourself, sending out your Knights to do all the worst work.”

He had been needling and needling, and finally this is too much. Voldemort doesn’t even require a wand for this – he shoves his hand upward, and Harry is thrown backward, his head hitting the glass hard. It’s painfully solid for a dream, and he winces.

And then Voldemort is up, stalking toward him, conjuring a knife with a long carved blade. “I have not yet killed you because you may yet be valuable,” he hisses. And then there’s a downward slash of the blade along Harry’s collarbone, rending his robe. “Consider it a gift.”

“Monster,” Harry breathes, as the cut goes hot with drops of blood. His robe is drooping from his shoulders now, and he’s pulling it up, pressing the fabric to the incision to staunch the bloodflow. “I will never be useful to you.”

“Then I may as well kill you now, shall I?”

And because Harry is a stupid, _stupid_ Gryffindor: “Yeah, you should.”

So Voldemort raises the knife and plunges it into the hollow of Harry’s throat.

 

He wakes up screaming, his mouth filling with blood. It’s real, too real, and he’s pulling his sticky pyjama top away from his chest as Ron throws back his bedcurtains. “Holy hell, Harry,” Ron says faintly, and then he’s being hauled to the hospital wing.

Madam Pomfrey is not pleased. “Did you fall asleep on top of your wand?” she asks as she shears his pyjamas off him entirely. “Or a broken bottle, perhaps?”

He can’t tell her. She wouldn’t believe him anyway. _Voldemort is back, we can share dreams, and I pretty much dared him to stab me._ “Dunno,” he mutters around a mouthful of blood, and then Madam Pomfrey tilts his head back to begin casting spells.

Long minutes later, she tells him it is a cursed wound. “It will heal, but not cleanly,” she says, slapping on a stinging poultice. “Are you quite sure you don’t know what happened?”

“No, ma’am.”

“Not even if I send Weasley and Longbottom out?”

“No, ma’am.”

“Hm,” she grumbles, but Madam Pomfrey has obviously seen some shit in her time, and been lied to more boldly than this. Still, she might tie the next bandage just a bit too tight at Harry’s neck.

 

Across the castle, Tom wakes up in a puddle of his own blood.

Even as he’s choking on it, he reaches up to his throat in disbelief. The lacerations are the same as he’s just given Potter. And whatever that means….

He’s already lightheaded as he stumbles into the loo, grabbing his wand on the way. _Episkey, Episkey_ , and the edges of the laceration blacken as he tries to knit himself back together.

Looking into the sink’s mirror, he finds his doppelganger wincing and glowering as he casts, and Tom grows angrier and angrier. Potter is just aggressively mediocre, indifferent to most politics and all of his schoolwork, and yet they are tied together by fate. He is anchored to this child, for reasons beyond his comprehension. He spits dark blood into the basin.

Happily, it’s Saturday, and he can beg off meals and everything else. Mid-afternoon, Albus comes by with a healing potion and a bowl of soup, which is unspeakably obnoxious. They both know he’s fishing for just what’s wrong with Tom, so Tom musters all his graciousness to thank him, to say he’ll be fine before Monday’s classes, and to shut the door in his meddling face.

His books on Parseltongue had been less than elucidating, what possible connection or transference might exist between them. Apparently it extends well beyond Parseltongue. The only magic he’s aware of that would create shared wounds were particular types of soulmates, when one partner is sustained by the soul of another. It’s quite a good joke, since with the existence of his Horcruces, Tom scarcely has a soul still within his body to preserve at all. Which may well be a problem in its own right, but what the hell has it got to do with Potter?

In the end, he actually removes his ring from its jewelry box, slipping it on his finger as he convalesces. It does help. And on Monday morning, when Potter is still absent from his class, he hums a note of feigned disinterest, marks it on the attendance sheet, and pretends as though he neither knows nor cares what happened to him.

 

Harry ends up with a scar. Another one, in a sort of starburst pattern in the hollow of his throat. Madam Pomfrey tells him he’s unspeakably lucky that the knife (he’d had to admit that much to her, finally) had only nicked his trachea, that it had missed his carotid, and that his friends had promptly dragged him to the infirmary before he bled out. “Whatever – _stupidity_ you’d gotten into, don’t do it again,” she says as he is finally cleared to go.

He’s certain that _she’s_ certain it’s some sort of weird sex thing, because being a boarding school nurse must be the most trying and horrifying job sometimes.

He intends to tell his friends, really he does, but with every passing day it just sounds less likely and more scandalous. If not treasonous. He hasn’t properly investigated, but he’s fairly sure Voldemort has been declared an enemy of Great Britain already. So he misleads his friends slightly, saying it must be some latent curse that Voldemort or a Knight had put on him, and that distracts them into speculation of which Slytherin student would carry out their parents’ evil plans, and then Harry hasn’t got to confess anything more to them.

But at his next tutoring session with Moody, he sort of mentions that he’s seen Voldemort in his dreams before, which is lying only by omission but also true enough that Moody’s immediately paranoid and furious. “Occlumency,” he snaps, and he’s thrusting his wand in the air to just summon a pile of library books on the subject, which Harry didn’t even know it was possible to do. “Keep that monster out of your mind.”

“It’s only a dream,” Neville protests in Harry’s defense.

Moody’s magical eye swivels. “Is it?” he growls. “He’s a talented Legilimens. It was always a liability on the battlefield, that the ones without Occlumency could just be cut down by him while they’re still formulating their spell. Constant vigilance,” and he slaps the desk before him for emphasis. Neville jumps.

Constant vigilance includes sleep, apparently, and Harry understands why it would, just – He’d really been enjoying the dueling magic they’d been practicing before this. Occlumency is boring at best, and at worst, making his mind blank seems to just offer more room for Voldemort to invade, to look around, to manipulate all those unconscious bits of himself in there.

They are sent home with homework, to practice clearing their minds before bed each night. “It’ll be good for you, regardless,” Moody says as he shoves the library books into Neville’s grasp. “A good Occlumens can evade even Veritaserum.”

And Harry is so curious when Moody expects he’ll need to lie under oath, but really – the way his life is going, these small deceptions all adding up, he thinks this would probably be for the best.

And then Moody sends Neville back to the dorm but instructs Harry to stay behind. “Anything else you’re keeping from me?” he asks, his eye studying Harry as though it’s also got a lie detector in. For all Harry knows, it does.

“No, sir.”

“Sure?”

“Well.” Seizing on a moment of sudden boldness, he chews his lower lip. “I know there’s a prophecy about us. And why he wanted to kill me.”

Moody’s expression doesn’t shift, under all that scar tissue. “Albus meant to keep that from you, until later.”

 _That’s_ infuriating, but he hasn’t got time for it now. “I want to hear it.”

“No.”

“I _deserve_ to hear it,” Harry presses on. “I deserve to know why all this happened, to begin with.”

“The most dangerous thing anyone can do with a prophecy is to believe it,” Moody says gravely. “Potter, no. We couldn’t stop you as an adult, but we can certainly stop you now.”

 _Oh_. He hadn’t known that. _But there’s no time_ , he can’t protest. Voldemort won’t wait patiently for him to turn seventeen and to do this the right way. Stuffing the last library book into his bag: “Then no, sir. That’s all.”

Moody squints at him. “What’s this about?”

He’s revealed too much, and it makes him feel stupid, navigating all these politics with adults who tell him nothing. He only shakes his head. “Just curious. ‘Night.”

“No, Potter. Harry. Stay.”

He freezes. “Yeah?”

“Black wants to see you. Next weekend. Dumbledore is the Secret Keeper, you’ll have to go with him.”

He’s got no idea what a Secret Keeper is, but fine. “Sure. Cool. When is he going to be exonerated?” And Moody makes a noise so grim that Harry nearly stares. “He’s innocent, though!”

“You think the Ministry cares about that?” Moody says. “Pettigrew is already an embarrassment, and they want to just shove him in Azkaban until he dies already. Admitting they completely bollocksed up due process with Sirius, and people are going to get sacked, if public pressure gets to be too much.”

“But that’s _bullshit_.”

“Yeah,” Moody says. “It is.”

So Harry leaves angry that night – not angry with Moody, just the entire process, and their shitty shitty justice system. Because somewhere deep within him he’d wondered if he could go live with Sirius after this year. That’s what godparents were for, wasn’t it? And it’s not as though he has anywhere else to go. But Sirius’s continued imprisonment in his parents’ home – he’s only written Harry twice now, but it’s clear it’s killing him. And he just – deserves better.

So Neville looks taken aback when Harry practically storms in to their dorm later. “Hi,” he says. “I thought we could….” He gestures with the thickest book Moody had given them. _Mind Magics, Security, and Surveillance._ It looks ghastly.

“Sure.” Harry can’t entirely swallow his anger, but he’s trying not to take it out on Neville, at least. Casting their typical silencing charm on the bedcurtains and settling onto Neville’s bed beside him, he pages through the chapter on Occlumency. “Moody gave me a book on it before,” he says. “For the Dementors. So I could, whatever, ignore them.”

“Oh, right. So you’ll be better at this than I am.”

Harry makes a very doubtful noise. His feelings about Sirius, about Moody, about Dumbledore, about Voldemort all burn brightly within him. “Probably not. Here.” Reaching for the book: “ _Clearing your mind requires care and impartiality. For your first exercise, you may count backwards from one hundred, acknowledging and dismissing any passing thoughts._ ”

“Right,” Neville says, looking over the page. “I’ll start, then.” Sitting back against the headboard: “One hundred, ninety-nine, ninety-eight – “

And then Harry slips a hand along the back of Neville’s knee, where he’s ticklish.

Neville kicks, laughing. “Don’t try to distract me.”

Grinning, he pokes at the soft milky flesh. “Clear your mind,” he chides. “Don’t let all those annoying thoughts into your head.”

“Know what else is annoying,” Neville mutters, and then he’s reaching for the ticklish spot at Harry’s waist, and Harry flails out of the way unsuccessfully. Neville grabs him by a belt loop, and then the hand at his waist slips beneath his shirt, and they’re both warm and laughing even as Neville ducks in to kiss him.

It’s soft, just a peck, but immediately Neville pulls back, eyes wide. “I should’ve asked – was that okay – “

“Shut up.” Harry is still laughing, his hand is still on Neville’s knee, they’re still both leaning in toward each other. “Of course it’s okay. Here.” And he presses in, more boldly this time, as they both figure out how their mouths go.

So that’s as far as Occlumency practice gets that night.

 

The following weekend, Harry climbs the revolving staircase to Dumbledore’s office. “Ice mice,” he says to the gargoyle, which lets him in with a somewhat suspicious look.

Dumbledore sits behind his great desk. “Ah, Harry. Excellent.”

“Hi, sir.” He’s got a bag over his shoulder, filled with cauldron cakes and pastries, because he expects eating food other than prison gruel is still a novelty to Sirius. “Are we taking the floo?”

“We are. But first you must listen. The headquarters of the Order of the Phoenix is located at 12 Grimmauld Place in London,” Dumbledore says deliberately.

A spark of interest. The Order of the Phoenix. If he’s being let in…. “12 Grimmauld Place in London,” he repeats back.

“You will not be able to divulge this to anyone else. It is quite complicated security, for a number of reasons, including Sirius’s safety.”

Harry knows faintly that Dumbledore’s got a Ministry position too, that he sits on the Wizengamot in some capacity, and _surely_ he can be doing more for the cause of Sirius’s freedom than he’s currently doing. “… Yes, sir.”

Dumbledore beams at him as though he hadn’t heard the bit of resentment in Harry’s tone. “Let’s be off then, shall we?”

They step out into a dark, mouldering home with swords on the wall and a grandfather clock with a face in the shape of a goblin’s. “Albus?” comes Remus’s voice from another part of the floor, and then footsteps, and then Remus strides in still holding a spatula. “And Harry,” he says warmly. “Come into the kitchen, we’re just finishing breakfast. Can I get you tea? Coffee?”

Sirius is not so sallow or shrunken as he’d been before, but he seems broken in a different way now. He moves as though this house is swallowing him alive.

Harry gathers bits and pieces from their conversation – that Voldemort has not yet approached Greyback or the vampires, but they are already so hostile to the Ministry that he may not need no. The German and Swiss Ministries disagree about what to do with Grindelwald, and they haven’t got _time_ for infighting but it seems both police forces are too territorial to collaborate. And nobody has yet worked out if Grindelwald and Voldemort are allied this time.

Harry listens behind his mug of tea, mentally compiling all the things he knows about Voldemort. He has mentioned Grindelwald, but not in a particular way that would gesture to an alliance. Still, that would be best for him, wouldn’t it, if Dumbledore were overburdened with them both. Given Voldemort’s antipathy for Dumbledore, he feels confident that this is part of it.

Eventually Dumbledore departs, with instructions that his floo will be left open for Harry until the usual curfew. And when he is gone, Sirius releases a deep sigh. “Well, that was awful,” he mutters into his coffee cup, before summoning a dark liquor bottle to tip into it.

Remus’s face flickers in something complicated. “He’s doing a lot for you.”

“Yeah, yeah.” And then he pushes the bottle across the table to Harry. “Heard you got cursed.”

He doesn’t want to give them one more thing to worry over. “I’m fine. It was just stupid.”

“You take any strange packages?”

“No.”

“Cursed jewelry?”

“No.”

“Any of those little shits in Slytherin lend you a scarf?”

“Sirius!” But he’s laughing now. “No. I do know better.”

“Good.”

 

It’s a day of just being together, of Sirius and Remus recounting all their fondest school days to Harry. He hears that his mum loved Potions almost as much as she loved Charms; that his dad had a particular (“ _very_ particular,” Remus stresses with a smile) ritual of polishing his broom before a match; that they’d given out their wedding invitations on the last day of school. And then Sirius goes on to tell him about his _grandparents_ , Euphemia and Fleamont. “Pretty much took me in as a second son,” he says warmly. “After I ran away from here,” he jerks his chin upward, “at sixteen.”

Harry gazes at the floral wallpaper and crumbling crown molding that surrounds them. “I can’t imagine growing up here.”

A dry laugh. “You haven’t even met my mum yet. She’s in the front hallway.”

“A portrait,” Remus adds hastily, seeing Harry’s look of horror, because really some sort of mummification or taxidermy wouldn’t be out of place with this décor. “We keep some heavy drapes and a silencing charm around her now. She, ah, wouldn’t be pleased to know Sirius is back.”

“Mad old bitch,” Sirius mutters. “I should go see her after all, maybe she’ll finally just self-immolate in rage.”

“Please don’t. Getting her quiet the first time was a nightmare.”

They’re all sort of aware that this is a… test, to see if Harry should come live with Sirius over the summers. They’re lucky to have all year to get acquainted before they’ve got to decide. “So you’ll have to sell this place,” he says, “and get somewhere nicer.”

“Yeah. I’m sure Bellatrix will kick up a fight, selling ancestral property.” He upends his glass. “Cousins,” he says by way of explanation. “Cousins with Bella and with Narcissa Malfoy. My parents funded Voldemort first, wretched cousin-fucking supremacists they were. And my little brother Regulus had the distinct honor of being killed by him directly before Reg was even twenty. So,” he spreads his hands. “Everyone expected I’d join Voldemort too. Why nobody was really surprised when they thought I’d sold out your parents.” His voice catches in anger on those words.

“But… you were a Gryffindor.”

“So was Peter.”

“… Yeah.”

It’s nice to be actually told things about his own life for once. And Sirius is clearly seething, but none of it is directed at Harry, so that’s okay.

And sometime that afternoon, Remus goes to do the washing up and Sirius says he needs a shower, so Harry is left on his own. They’d been in a sort of study nook, with armchairs and bookshelves (“ _These_ , you can touch,” Sirius had said, eyeing the titles. “But at least half the library is cursed.”) and it’s just an idle gesture that Harry reaches to open the side table drawer. Quills, dried out ink bottles, and a locket.

He lifts it out curiously, forgetting every warning against curses Moody had ever drilled into his stupid head. It’s quite heavy, and cast in silver with a snake motif around the edges. And despite wedging his thumbnail beneath the clasp, Harry can’t open it for anything.

Maybe he could pry it open back in his dorm, he considers as he turns the locket over in his hands. It’s quite a handsome piece, and the way Sirius talks about this house, he’d just as soon light the entire thing up in Fiendfyre anyway. Maybe Harry can keep something sentimental in the locket; a photo of his parents perhaps. So at the end of the day, without really thinking about it, he drops the locket in the bottom of his bag. He’d like to figure it out later.

 

 


	6. Chapter 6

Over Christmas holidays, Voldemort is summoned by Severus. Thinking to himself that his generosity must be some sort of latent Christmas spirit, he deigns to summon him to a remote bit of Wales.

Severus braces for the cold as soon as he apparates in. “My Lord,” he mutters, sinking to his knees upon the thin sheet of ice in the grass.

“Up, Severus.”

And he goes into it immediately: “Dumbledore has asked me to accompany his giant envoys. He says the damage they caused in the last war was among their worst, that he needs their alliance earlier this time. I am to join them because – well, because Hagrid can scarcely do any magic at all,” he sneers. “Even with the dispensation. And because I am to offer them a rainmaking potion.”

“You should go with them.”

“And?”

“And play nice. Dumbledore’s quite invested in you these days, isn’t he?” Voldemort says, because he witnesses Dumbledore and Snape take a private meeting at least once a week now.

“You want Dumbledore to have the giants?” Severus asks doubtfully. When Voldemort reaches for his wand, he flinches. “Of course, my Lord.”

“Good. Go.”

Severus steps back, then hesitates, even knowing it will likely get him Crucio’ed. “My Lord – you have not asked about Hogwarts recently – “

He hasn’t. He will simply kill Severus if the man ever comes too near to learning his identity. “I have not asked _you_ ,” he says curtly.

“Yes, my Lord.”

He makes a gesture, a _merciful_ gesture. “Nevertheless, what insight would you bring?”

“Potter is spending the holidays with his godfather. He apparently intends to live with him over the summers. And Black – this home has been made the headquarters of the Order of the Phoenix.”

“And you’ve been allowed inside?”

“Yes.”

“Fidelius?”

“Yes. Albus is its Secret Keeper.”

Albus trusts Severus so much more than he ought to. Of course he’s got vested interest in believing that _love_ is a redemptive force, but honestly. “Find a way inside,” he says. “The Black family estates are a knot of dark magic, surely something will get past a Fidelius.”

Snape gives him a curious look. There is no Black patriarch alive anymore, although there had always been rumors that Voldemort was among their family, given their generations of dark arts practitioners. “Yes, my Lord. But… it may be easier to break into Hogwarts.”

 _But I promised Harry I wouldn’t kill him at Hogwarts_. And rather than being forced to justify himself to Severus for the second time that night, he casts a necrotic flame curse that slashes across Severus’s chest.

Hissing, Snape stumbles back, casting a spell to stop the damage from spreading. “Fine,” he spits, and apparates out before Voldemort can curse him further.

Impertinent.

It is only recently that Voldemort’s plans have coalesced into anything beyond defense, or readying himself for Grindelwald’s war. He wants Hogwarts more than he wants Britain, truthfully, but he wants control of the Muggle world more than them both. The wizards are a pittance of a constituency compared to the Muggle world, and really all the ills of the world can be put at the feet of the Muggle governments anyway. Dumbledore and Fudge must be removed to destabilize the wizards, but after that, Voldemort and the Knights will target Britain’s Muggle government. A few crises, a few disappearances, a few resignations….

Perhaps Lucius would like to be installed as the next PM. The Malfoys have always consorted with the Muggle upper class more than they would admit.

So all he needs of Harry – is to keep him _safe_.

Voldemort has not yet solved why Harry’s own injury would manifest on his body. Maybe the unreliable magic of the dreamscape faltered. Regardless, it can’t happen again. Potter damn near killed him on Halloween 1981, he’s not getting a second chance at it now. So if Voldemort may capture Harry, study him, and then hold him in some sort of stasis.

It’s a peculiar feeling, to go so abruptly from needing to kill Harry to needing to protect him. Whiplash. And there is still the matter of the prophecy….

He arrives back in Hogwarts in time to be witnessed by Dumbledore as they both retrieve a bedtime tea from the kitchens. “Dream well,” Dumbledore chirrups, and Tom wishes to throw a necrotic curse at him too.

He had seen Snape on December 23rd. Hagrid is still absent when they sit down to New Year’s Day lunch. So Tom has a quite productive conversation with Septima Vector about her newest article in _Arithmantics Today_. And the elves are just serving puddings when the great door bangs open.

Hagrid staggers in, both eyes blacked from a fight. Immediately Dumbledore is up, and so is Poppy Pomfrey, pushing him into a chair. “Fine, I’m fine,” Hagrid is muttering, even as he’s taking a cold compress from Poppy. “But Olympia – “ And then his choked sob shakes the cutlery.

Tom listens with his practiced expression of concern. Bellatrix had done what he’d needed her to, then.

Hagrid recounts it to the table with no discretion whatsoever – that the three of them had found the largest commune of giants in Europe, now residing in the Pyrenees. Snape had offered potions to their chief while Olympia had tended to his wife and Hagrid to their stallions. And it had seemed to go well, until the final day, when Bella and Barty had stoked a coup that would kill the chief’s entire family. The new chief is already under Bella’s Imperio.

So Tom is quite satisfied to take away one potential ally of Dumbledore’s. Less so that Madame Maxime had been cursed in the encounter, because he had intended to have Lucius or Narcissa approach her later. But no matter.

Hagrid is set right with a healing potion and an ale. Snape, who had returned to the castle a few days earlier, says he has already told everything relevant to Dumbledore, and Hagrid says they are among friends, really Snape…. Glower.

Tom happens to fall in step with Dumbledore at the feast’s conclusion. “If it comes to violence – more violence than has already transpired,” Dumbledore says, “would you protect Hogwarts?”

Tom can make few declarations of loyalty, because some of them are magically binding, and he’s got Grindelwald’s runes still encircling his wrists as well. “I have made too many vows in the past to be truly helpful to you,” he says delicately, and he sees the flicker of doubt in Albus’s face, whether Tom’s background in dark arts is a liability. They have always skirted the issue. “Nevertheless, I will protect Hogwarts.”

“Tom,” Dumbledore sighs, pitying him for some hideous reason.

“Don’t. I’ve already agreed. Isn’t it enough?”

“Quite so.”

“Good,” Tom says, and parts from Dumbledore at the staircase.

 

They fall into each other’s minds again that night. Harry has heard the news of the giants – probably from Moody, if not from correspondence with Hagrid himself. And Voldemort pushes Occlumency between them, because surely he can keep an untrained fifteen year old out of his mind. But Harry is looking for something.

He finds that Voldemort ordered the ambush but wasn’t present for it himself. And then there’s a more complex thought, one that Tom must untangle – _I want to see you in person._

With the mental equivalent of a sigh, he pulls them into a dreamspace. Slytherin’s common room, again. “You may surrender yourself at the Lestrange estate at any time.”

Harry glares at him from the opposite sofa. “Coward,” he says once again. “You should want them to know you’re alive.”

“And if it is simpler to remain in the shadows, in order to foil Grindelwald?”

He sees a spark in Harry’s eyes. This stupid child, probably raised on comic books, who hadn’t considered he may have a motive beyond evil for evil’s sake. “And you had to attack Hagrid for it?” he challenges.

“Yes.”

“And kill Karkaroff?”

He allows a smirk to curl his mouth. “No. Karkaroff was personal.”

“You are….” Harry buries his hands in his hair, pulling in frustration. “Awful,” he concludes.

“Indeed. Was that all you wanted?”

He accompanies this question with a bit of Legilimency, since after all this dream is only a façade, so Harry’s answer comes tumbling from his mouth unbidden: “I can’t tell them I dream of you. They’ll think I’m mad. Or worse.”

“Worse than mad?”

“Yeah,” Harry says, and doesn’t expand on it.

Voldemort quite likes this, being an ambiguous figure, unnamed and unspoken. “Perhaps you are mad,” he suggests archly. “Perhaps it’s all in your head.”

“You fucking stabbed me,” Harry mutters.

“As requested.”

And Harry actually _rolls his eyes_ at him, as though he isn’t a murderous dark lord but merely an irritating adult. (Which, in their other life….) “Grindelwald doesn’t mind the attention.”

“And the time he spends posturing before terrified journalists is time not spent taking over Europe.”

Harry is not reassured by this. Narrowing his eyes: “I’m going to Dumbledore.”

“Dumbledore has done nothing but abandon you.”

A clench of Harry’s jaw. It’s a statement designed to hurt; but somehow he doesn’t take the bait. “Yeah. But it’ll be useful to him, knowing about this.”

“He will lock you away again. For your _protection_.”

Briefly Harry wavers. “He might. But keeping everyone else safe is more important.”

This boy. His precious, ill-fated attempts at heroism. “ _Harry_.” And his tone is mocking, and amused, and – a bit fond. If his life must be intertwined with some underachieving teenager, at least it’s the foolhardy one and not the anxious mess that is Longbottom.

Harry doesn’t react. “Okay,” he says, standing from the plush sofa. “Thought I’d warn you.”

“Thank you.”

Another eye roll. “Stop sending your Knights to fight your battles. People deserve the chance to look you in the eye, before you try to kill them.”

“You are such a hopeless _Gryffindor._ ”

“I know you’d duel people before killing them,” Harry informs Voldemort. “It was in some of the books. And that’s – well, it’s still hideous, but it’s fairer. And if there’s going to be another war….”

Potter thinks he believes in such thing as _just warfare_. In the mutual respect between opponents. “There are no ethics in war,” he says. “Such things are only told to civilians to assuage their discomfort.”

Harry glares. “Did you duel my father?”

“Would it make a difference to you if I did?”

“Yes.”

“ _Would_ it?” Voldemort asks skeptically. “They remain dead, heroism or otherwise.”

“I just want to know how they bloody died. I deserve that.”

“Have the Dementors not revealed enough?”

Harry blinks. “How do you know that,” he says flatly.

“You leave your heart as open as your mind.”

“You can’t – “ And Voldemort sees Harry cycle through all the secrets he’d like to keep. “Fine,” he bites out instead. “Then no, I don’t know enough from the Dementors. _How did they die_?”

“Perhaps I can bring you into the memory later. Perhaps it can be a reward.”

“God, you’re awful,” Harry mutters. “Nevermind.”

And then he’s moving to go, and Voldemort feels a surge of such abrupt anger that he thinks Harry can feel it too. Grabbing his wrist: “Never turn your back on me,” he says lowly.

And Harry gives a sort of staccato laugh, wrenching his wrist away. “You don’t scare me,” he tells Voldemort. “And I am never, ever going to answer to you. _My Lord_.”

But Voldemort considers this. The words are wrong in the mouth of his opponent, his… equal. So the prophecy has decreed. “I wouldn’t want you to.”

Another dry laugh. “Great. Cheers. Goodnight.” He pulls open the door on the far wall of the common room, and he is gone from Voldemort’s mind.

\---

The following week, Potter returns from Christmas holidays glowing. He’d spent it between the Black estate and the Weasley home apparently, and he’s got on the same sort of knitted jumper that the twins are wearing when they disembark the train. He and Ginny have some new inside joke. And apparently Granger spent the holiday with them as well, and she and Ron are now just painfully awkward around each other. Tom typically disregards all the hormonal adolescent nonsense unfolding around him, but this is _palpable_.

And Potter’s got Longbottom, and they’d been coy about it at first. But the first time Tom had found them snogging behind the statue of Wendelin the Weird between classes, he’d given them both detention. “Separately,” he adds. And Longbottom can barely look at him – which isn’t unusual, really – but Potter is fighting to keep a self-satisfied smirk off his face. It is infuriating.

And now that the fifth years are back from the holidays, they have begun to worry about OWLs in earnest. Every professor is obligated to write a study guide, and most hold additional study sessions. This includes Tom, less because he is actually interested in these children’s academic success and more because it would not benefit him to look as though he’s sabotaging the students who will one day doubtless become Dumbledore’s soldiers.

For his first session, Granger drags Weasley in and Potter and Longbottom drag each other. Perhaps Moody insisted on it. A number of Ravenclaws and Hufflepuffs file in. Slytherins last, because presumably most of them have hired private tutors already. Tom flips the chalkboard over, where he’s diagrammed the creation of hexes.

The students are slightly less distracted than in a typical class, perhaps because they all understand they’ve voluntarily given up their evening for this. But finally, ninety minutes in, Hannah Abbot casts a jinx that makes Ernie Macmillan’s hair grow into a topiary, and everyone is punch drunk enough to go into hysterics. Irritated, Tom casts Finite on Macmillan, tells them the study session is over, and that they’ve got twenty minutes before curfew.

They get out. But when Tom turns back from erasing the board, he finds Potter hovering still at his desk. “Yes, Potter?”

“Idontwanttobeanauror.”

“… Pardon?”

“I don’t want to be an Auror,” he repeats in a more intelligible tone. “So I wondered – if there’s jobs that do this work. But without working for the Ministry. Sir.”

Tom will not flatter himself to think everything he’d said about the morality of war had much to do with Potter’s change of heart. “I assume your time with Black has stirred these feelings of dissent,” he guesses instead. Because Black is a fugitive, officially on the run and unofficially being sheltered by Dumbledore, and Potter has come back from Christmas talking so freely of him, you’d think he was _trying_ to get his godfather re-captured.

Potter nods. “And – a werewolf,” he says, with barely any more discretion. “I’d have to arrest them. And everyone else who might be innocent, who didn’t even get a _trial_ – “ His tone rises in righteous indignation. He swallows.

Tom would like to send Potter to bed, to tell him to come to his office hours tomorrow, but… he expects Potter will not be so vulnerable, so full of _potential_ after a night’s sleep. “Come with me,” he says.

Potter even carries his books back to his office for him.

Into the office. Potter falters inside the doorway. “Oh! – Hi, Nagini.”

She flicks her tongue, to test his presence. “ _The scarred one has come_.”

Harry clearly does not recognize the difference between English and Parseltongue, the sibilant undertone of the latter. He seems remarkably unfazed by her in any case, taking the nearest chair so he can pat her head like a dog’s.

And when they are sitting across from one another, Harry begins again. “I’m good at all this,” he says. “And I like it. But the Ministry… Sirius would be devastated if I turned around to work for them. He’s already got a cousin who’s an Auror, and he spent the entire holiday sniping at her that she’d sold out. So.” Harry gives him a mildly helpless look. “So I dunno.”

“There are private security forces. Bodyguards. Or you might go into research – though most of it is Ministry-funded as well. With advanced Charms work you could develop weaponry. If you are truly interested in the justice system, you could go into the Wizengamot, to reform it from within. You could teach.”

Tom experiences this all as a farce. He still needs to defuse Potter, to untangle the magic between them before potentially killing him, before the boy becomes a significant threat. Harry isn’t going to need a career, because he’ll scarcely grow up to see it. But they must progress through this polite charade, for now.

“Not much point in studying to teach, is there,” Harry says. “Unless you’re retiring?”

It’s overly familiar but it’s fine. “Not imminently. There would be a three year apprenticeship. And there are larger schools abroad, that employ more wizards.”

Harry’s eyes are bright with interest. “An apprenticeship here?”

 _Oh you stupid trusting boy_. “If you’d like.”

“I would. I mean – that sounds really good. I’d like teaching.”

He may as well agree. He’s not taken on any apprentices, in the fifteen years of his appointment here. And it will keep Potter close to him while Tom needs to study him. He moves his face into a smile, and he knows that for the moment he is handsome. “Yes,” he says. “I’d like that.” And Harry grins back at him.

\---

Harry is still warm with pleasure as he lets himself back into the dorm. It had been the worst part of Christmas, realizing just how awful the Aurors could be. He hasn’t fought with Moody yet, but it’s coming. So it’s a relief to have another future before him.

And Riddle is… good. Cool and prickly, but Harry likes some sharpness. And it is so rare to see him pleased or proud, that he cherishes those moments.

Tomorrow, he’ll tell Neville.

He hasn’t practiced Occlumency as much as he ought to. And while he reaches for _Mind Magics_ on his bedside table, his hand ends up on the locket he took from Grimmauld Place. It’s always _warm_ , he has discovered, even when it’s been left in a cool room alone all day. He hasn’t gotten it open yet, no matter how many spells he’s tried. Whoever owned this before – Walburga? Her mother? – must have really cherished it, to protect it with such strong magic.

He ends up dropping the locket on his stomach as he falls asleep. And – well, it’s not _dreams_ that come to him that night, exactly, but very intense and intimate feelings. As though someone is prying open his soul to peer inside.

 

He’s not able to see Dumbledore until a few weeks into the term. He doesn’t know quite what to say. But the locket holds warmth and magic, so he slips it on beneath his robes before going.

The gargoyle lets him in, and Harry finds Dumbledore gazing into a spindly golden astrolabe with a mirror in the center. “Harry. Come in.”

Fawkes lets out a soft click as Harry approaches the desk. “Hi, sir. Hi, Fawkes. Ah.” He pulls his robes straight over his knees he as sits. “This is about Voldemort.”

And he’s got to shove Dumbledore out of his mind, to the extent that he’s even learned Occlumency yet. He understands why, but it’s annoying all the same.

He doesn’t tell Dumbledore everything. Arguably, he doesn’t even tell him the most important bits, which it that he and Voldemort _talk_ now, and Voldemort has extended some promises he probably won’t keep. What he does disclose is that sometimes – a few times a year, not a significant amount – he has seen Voldemort in his dreams. And he has been plotting, to upend Britain at the same time as Grindelwald is attacking the continent. He intends to burden Dumbledore by making him defend against them both simultaneously; and even though he doesn’t seem be directly engaged with the warfare himself, he’d still send out his Knights to carry out his plans.

“I don’t think I’ve seen his – home,” Harry says haltingly. “Or hideout or whatever. He’s been in Hogwarts before, in the Slytherin common room – oh, he said he was a Slytherin, not that that’s a surprise – and in the Ministry. And the Crouch home. I think that’s it.”

Dumbledore’s eyes are on the vaulted ceiling as he listens, now that he’s given up on Legilimency. (Or can it be done without eye contact? Harry wishes he’d studied more before his headmaster invaded his mind.) “That seems like quite a significant insight.”

“Yes, sir.”

“And can you communicate in turn?”

“No, sir,” Harry lies, easily because he’s been anticipating the question for months.

“Hm.” Dumbledore still does not look at him. “It seems, then, that Voldemort is not aware of the extent of your connection.”

“What _is_ the extent of our connection? Sir,” Harry adds, a little impertinent.

“You know of the prophecy,” Dumbledore says gravely.

“I know that there is one. Not what it says.” (So Moody had gone to Dumbledore. He is disappointed.)

“That seems best. Voldemort’s downfall was little more than his own hubris, when he believed he could outsmart Fate.”

“How?”

“Ah, it would be a tragedy if the same mistake befell you as him.”

 _I’m not going to kill any babies_ , Harry does not answer. But then, he never expected Dumbledore to tell him the prophecy. All the more reason to get into the Department of Mysteries on his own.

At least he’s kept his promise that he’s not bloody keeping Voldemort’s secrets for him. Sort of.

\---

Tom hears about it from Hagrid. Or, _overhears_ , more appropriately, because that oaf’s thundering tone could carry across half the castle. He is just approaching the faculty lounge when Hagrid’s voice rings out: “ – said i's better to work with Grindelwald than You Know Who – said Grindelwald’s a politician, while he’s jus’ a terrorist – she won’t go back, Dumbledore, an’ I don’t blame her.”

Tom opens the door to the lounge while summoning the most indifferent expression he can manage. A strategic moment to hang in the doorway, then – “My apologies. I’ll come back later – “

“What do _yeh_ know of Grindelwald?” Hagrid demands.

Tom pauses. They’ve never gotten on – Tom had had Hagrid expelled, after all – so they rarely spoke more than necessary. But he and Dumbledore are both looking curiously at Tom now.

His face still carefully neutral: “Not more than Albus does, I imagine.”

Albus does not react. “No,” he agrees. “But my years of dark arts have long passed.”

“As have mine.”

And there’s a flash of annoyance across Dumbledore’s face, and Tom feels so _petulantly_ triumphant at it. With Albus, he has never quite stopped being a teenager.

But Dumbledore only makes a gesture toward the door. “If, then, you would give us a minute?”

It wouldn’t do to eavesdrop just outside, at least after he’s already made himself known. “I don’t know Grindelwald personally,” he says, which is nearly true. “But his magic – his potential magic – “ He wonders if he could just maneuver Dumbledore and Grindelwald into killing one another, in the end.

Dumbledore is clearly weighing his words, and Hagrid is clearly – _not_. “She’s going to give him her school,” he sniffles into a handkerchief. “For their protection.”

The giants’ coup still had fallout, and Bella had taken it _very_ badly that Madame Maxime had only been cursed and not killed in the encounter. She’s still taking Crouch along with her – Tom wonders if she’s sleeping with him, in the grief of Rodolphus’s death – and really, together they can cause chaos enough to set the world ablaze.

Tom wanted the giants’ resistance movement eliminated, and it is instead galvanizing Olympia toward Grindelwald’s cause. He feels a headache forming. “Surely Beauxbatons is appropriately warded.”

“All those kids,” Hagrid sniffles, which does _not_ answer Tom’s question. “She’d die for them, any of them.”

“That doesn’t seem necessary.”

“Beauxbatons is quite warded,” Albus says. “With what, I don’t know. It would hardly matter if she lets him in through the gates.”

No, it wouldn’t. Tom runs a hand over his face. “Britons have been asking you to duel him at last for decades.”

“I cannot.” When Tom shoots him a skeptical look, Dumbledore hesitates, then shakes back the sleeves of his robes, undoing the buttons of his shirt at the wrists. _Oh_. “His magic prohibits me,” Dumbledore says, revealing the same string of runes that encircle Tom’s own wrists. Unlike Tom, he does not hide them. “I have employed Bathsheba and Severus both in neutralizing them, but until we discover how, I’m unable to use magic against him.”

Tom finds he’s got quite a lot of feelings about this revelation: irritation that Dumbledore will not defeat Grindelwald as he’d been hoping; surprise and a certain ambivalence that Dumbledore hadn’t approached him about this, as someone who clearly knew more of the dark arts than Severus. Perhaps it would be simpler to let Grindelwald kill Dumbledore instead, and then Voldemort will – somehow – defeat Grindelwald afterward.

But he does not let this silence stretch. “You can’t approach the Ministry, then?”

“I cannot.”

So Albus has been to see Grindelwald more recently than he would admit. Tom comes a bit closer, curious if the runes look fresh in any way. But on the contrary, they look darker and more embedded in Dumbledore’s skin than Tom’s own. “I see,” Tom says, and steps away again.

“I’d sooner chew off my own hands,” Hagrid says darkly, eyeing the runes. “Than be marked by him. Dark magic…. I’s got a sick sort of quality to it.”

“It is not a burden,” Dumbledore says. “Not physically, at least.” Deliberately he re-buttons his sleeves, shakes his robes down his arms. “But I am leaving to visit Beauxbatons tomorrow.”

“Good luck.” Tom doesn’t know whether he means it.

\---

“He is going to kill you.”

This is how Moody greets Harry, the next time he arrives at their classroom for tutoring. And Harry barely falters: “Voldemort? I know.”

Moody’s face snarls in either exasperation or amusement, it’s hard to say. “Voldemort second. Albus first. Why the hell would you tell him Voldemort’s in your dreams. Now he thinks you’re a _weapon_.”

“Really?” Harry enters, dropping his bookbag on his typical desk. “He didn’t seem – whatever. Angry.”

“Well, not at you. He’s got that much sense, at least.”

Harry hasn’t got any particularly strong feelings about this. If Dumbledore considers him a threat, he can damn well say so. “Oh. Sorry?”

“He says you need a concentrated curriculum of Occlumency. It’s a matter of national security.”

“I _have_ been working on Occlumency,” Harry says, mostly truthful. He and Neville would sit on one of their beds together, with a book between them as a pretext. At least at first. “And anyway, all the shield charms we’ve been doing – “

“Not here,” Moody interrupts. “I spend too much time away from the Ministry as it is. He said you’re going to learn it from Snape.”

“ _Hell_ no.”

The words just sort of burst forth, but Moody inclines his head as though he agrees. But then he says, “Snape learned from Dumbledore himself. It’s kept him out of trouble all these years. You’ll be fine.”

“Can’t I ask Professor Riddle?” Harry asks. “It’s _his_ job, really. And – and we get on. And he said I could apprentice with him, to teach after Hogwarts instead,” he says in a rush, because this night’s already ruined, and he wants Moody to know, because they’ve sort of talked around the possibility of Harry being an Auror before.

Moody squints. “Did he? He hasn’t been here long. Relatively. And no, you can’t, because Albus trusts Snape in a way he doesn’t trust Riddle. I don’t know why,” he adds before Harry can ask. “I expect Snape will report back.”

Fuck. “Then how….” Harry scrubs a hand over his face. “Okay. Occlumency with Snape.”

“Don’t sound so excited.”

At this rate he’ll just have an entire curriculum of private tutors by seventh years. He’s just – not this important, to warrant so much attention. He doesn’t feel remotely like a hero.

 

When he tells Neville about the impending Occlumency lessons, Neville actually gives a full body shudder. “An extra hour a week with Snape,” he says. “Can’t Dumbledore teach you himself?”

“… I didn’t think of it. Maybe.” Really, he’s curious why Dumbledore hadn’t said more to him at that meeting, that he’d listened impassively and then sent Harry on his way. “I could ask.”

“You probably should,” Neville says. “Otherwise, Occlumency is going to go as well as Potions. No offense.”

“Yeah.”

 

Ron is incensed, Hermione concerned. And Dumbledore is gone that entire week – McGonagall says it is a serious matter, so unless Harry has tracked down Voldemort on his own, surely it could wait a few days? So on yet another night Harry has to sacrifice to private tutoring, he arrives at the Potions classroom.

Snape is, if possible, even less enthusiastic about this endeavor than Harry is. “Moody’s given you instruction in Occlumency,” he says, thumping a heavy stack of books onto Harry’s desk. “ _Riddle’s_ given you instruction in Occlumency.”

“Professor Riddle left me a book,” Harry objects. _And it was more of a passive-aggressive gesture than a well-meaning one_ , he doesn’t add, because he’s begun to feel defensive of Riddle by now.

Snape points a finger at him. “Do not interrupt. And despite these previous efforts to teach you some amount of discretion, you are still here.”

Harry would like to tell Snape that he’s not exactly thrilled either. Instead, swallowing his anger: “I _have_ been practicing Occlumency before now. Sir.”

“We’ll see,” Snape says darkly, and before Harry can react: “Legilimens!”

And then his brain is split open like a geode, laid bare for Snape’s investigation. He doesn’t delve deep: Harry’s recent anxieties about taking the OWLs, last weekend flying with Ron even as Hermione insists they should be revising. Late nights with Neville, _Mind Magics_ abandoned on the pillows as they laugh and whisper, even behind a silencing charm, because the things they discuss are the whispering sort. Yesterday’s Potions class, Ron flipping Snape the V under his desk as Snape tells Hermione to stop hyperventilating for once –

And then Harry shoves him out, face hot with anger rather than embarrassment. “You’ve got no right,” he says. “This is – You haven’t got to go digging around, even if you _can_.”

Snape lifts his lip in a sneer. “So you have not practiced Occlumency.”

“Tell me what to do, then,” Harry challenges. “Since you’re supposed to be teaching, not – _spying_.”

“Because the Dark Lord will be so generous to allow you to gather your thoughts before he rips your mind apart.”

Harry throws up his hands. “Fine. You haven’t got to teach me anything, since you obviously don’t want to. Do it again.”

Snape only pauses a fraction of a second, surprised at Harry’s bravado. Then: “Legilimens!”

And Harry is trying to push all his thoughts backward into the recesses of his mind where Snape can’t reach them. Still: Draco pushing him in the corridors, Aunt Marge’s bulldog snarling at his feet. Sirius. And then Harry – he does the mental equivalent of a shove, expelling Snape from his mind with all the mental energy he’s got. Somewhere faintly he thinks, _at least Voldemort’s always let me leave_. This invasion is such an unpleasant feeling.

And Snape is out and they’re both breathing hard, staring at each other. “I already knew of Black,” Snape informs him. “Not that you have shown any discretion about him.”

“He is innocent,” Harry says coldly. “Leave him alone.”

“He is a menace,” Snape says, but then he goes on. “And this is not a _shoving match_. You will never be strong enough to keep him out. You must keep your thoughts elsewhere.”

“Where?”

“Figure it out, Potter.”

Snape is just the fucking worst, but Harry is dismissed for the night with this. He’s gritting his teeth all the way back to his dorm. _Keep his thoughts elsewhere_ , as though they can go anywhere but his bloody mind.

 

Between Moody’s tutoring and Snape’s, Harry expects his regular classes are going to suffer, but he does still want to do well in DADA. They’re studying Patronuses in class now, and Harry can consistently produce a sort of solid mist that will scatter curses into light particles, but he should be able to do better than that, especially if Riddle’s going to take him on as an apprentice. So one afternoon, when he’s got a free period, he lets himself into the classroom that still holds the boggart. (“It is probably unethical to keep it in captivity this long,” Hermione has said darkly, but nobody else remotely cares about the wellbeing of a boggart.)

The Patronus will be on the OWL, Riddle has warned them, even if it’s only extra credit. Harry really wants to be _good_ at Defense, for a lot of reasons. Bracing himself, he pops open the chest.

A boggart-turned-Dementor swirls before him, making him go icy from the inside out. Suddenly he can’t remember the happiness in his previous memory, the promise of living with Sirius and Remus over the summers now. He just feels empty, forlorn – the Dementor’s robes are brushing his face –

Then the classroom door swings open, and Riddle enters, and Harry is flooded with – relief. Warmth. Magic. Raising his wand: “Expecto Patronum!”

And then there’s the typical puff of silver smoke, but Harry holds onto his magic longer, and it coalesces –

A stag bursts forth, so bright that he can hardly make out its shape among its luminescence. He is breathless. His Patronus – it hits Harry deeply.

“Congratulations.”

He’s grinning as he looks over his shoulder at Riddle. “Thanks. Thought I’d never get it.”

“Of course you would.”

Harry lets the stag gambol around the classroom a bit longer. He’s never been around one up close – he’s only seen the deer of the Forbidden Forest in the evenings after Quidditch practice – and he hadn’t known how big they were. But it is peaceful, profoundly peaceful. And he and Riddle are content to watch in silence for a minute longer.

Finally he twists his wand, withdrawing the Patronus. “Now I haven’t got to worry about the Dementors,” he says. “At least, not more than anyone else.”

“Indeed.”

“And it can refract some dark spells too?” Harry asks, because they’d mostly spent time on the Patronus in relation to Dementors in class.

“Certain classes of dark magic, yes.”

“What about the ones Voldemort uses?”

Riddle gives him a dry look. “The Unforgivables? No, Harry.”

 _Sarcasm_. Harry delights in it. “The other ones,” he clarifies.

Riddle reaches for his wand, then clearly reconsiders. “I am not authorized to cast any dark magic at Hogwarts, for pedagogical purposes or otherwise. Ask Moody to cast something to practice on.”

“Oh. Okay.” He tries not to sound disappointed.

But Riddle lingers, sliding onto a desk to perch gracefully. “You’re learning Occlumency from Severus.”

“Yeah. I mean, I will be.” Because they’ve gotten this far, because they’re testing the possibility of Harry being a protégé-or-whatever, he offers, “I don’t know why Dumbledore didn’t ask you.”

Riddle’s lips twitch. “Because I am not obligated to Dumbledore as Severus is.”

“…How?”

“I don’t know the specifics. Only that – while I don’t expect you’d see Severus as a confidant otherwise,” he acknowledges, and Harry has got to laugh, “you should know that whatever he uncovers, he will take straight to Dumbledore.” When Harry hisses air through his teeth in irritation, Riddle looks at him curiously. “Is that a problem?”

“No,” Harry lies. “Dumbledore keeps us safe. Only – it’s nothing.”

“His distance from you is strategic.”

“Is it?”

“So it seems.”

Harry would never be so bold as to ask this question otherwise, but now – “Could he still be – on Grindelwald’s side?”

“No,” Riddle says immediately. “Absolutely not.”

“He’s not on the Ministry’s side.”

Another wry smile. “There are more than two sides of a war, Harry.”

Are there? It doesn’t seem to fit what he’s heard of war. That even what Harry knows of Dumbledore and the Order and everyone else…. “There’s going to be a war, then.”

“At least one.”

“I’d be more useful if he actually bloody told me anything.”

“You don’t need to be useful. You are fifteen.”

“And Voldemort wants to kill me!” Harry exclaims, indifferent to the surprise in Riddle’s expression. “I don’t know why everyone thinks I should be – whatever, _impartial_ to the war when it’s not impartial to me.”

He expects Riddle to say something even-handed, that he should let the adults keep him safe or something. Instead, placing a gloved hand on Harry’s shoulder: “I agree with you.”

“ _Do_ you?”

“Yes. Harry, I – “ He stops, weighing his words. “It’s beyond the boundaries of my professionalism to tell you that you should fight. Certainly beyond it to teach you how. But if you need some direction, anything to save yourself when they won’t save you….”

Somehow, the classroom feels as though it’s shrinking, as though Harry’s entire range of vision is filled with just the two of them. Plotting wildly, he nevertheless attempts a neutral tone: “If I need to escape the castle quickly – in case of an attack – what’s the best way out?”

“Good boy,” Riddle says, and leans in to tell him of Hogwarts’s secret passages.

 

Harry’s head still swims with plans and possibilities and _feelings_ as he returns to his dorm.

He’s lucky to have Professor Riddle in his life, he reflects as he drops his bookbag at the end of his bed. So few adults will tell him anything useful, will commiserate, will treat him as someone with vested interest in the war. Moody does what he can, but he’s got commitments to both Dumbledore and the Ministry. Sirius and Remus do what _they_ can, but they have even more obligations to Dumbledore and everything he’s done for them. And while Harry knows he and Dumbledore will end up on the same side ultimately, it’s been hard to feel charitable toward him this year.

And apart from all that – he _likes_ Riddle. (He shrugs off his robes, falling to his bed in his trousers and shirtsleeves.) He’s poised and serious, he rarely laughs or smiles, but that makes his unguarded moments more satisfying. (He’s unzipping his fly, kicking his trousers down to his knees.) He’s a talented teacher, and Harry loves DADA regardless, but he’s happy Riddle gets to see him at his most competent. (Silencing charm on the bed’s drapes.) And the way his stomach tugged this afternoon when he entered the classroom, with happiness and warmth and – _this_ feeling – Harry thinks he’d like to feel it again. (Licking his hand, he reaches down his pants.)

\---

Tom must stop by the library that afternoon, then straight to dinner. A pity, because he wanted to mull over this development in private, but instead he ends up seated beside Minerva, each of them with a book open before them.

“Potter came to me recently,” Minerva says as she serves herself from a tureen. “He says he would rather be a teacher than an Auror.”

“Yes.”

“And that you agreed to an apprenticeship.”

“If he is still interested in two years’ time.” _If he survives that long_.

Minerva makes a thoughtful noise. “Did you ever know his parents?”

“No.”

“They had intended to be Aurors. Of course, with the war, they never got the chance….” She heaves a sigh. “I expected he’d want to fulfill that dream of theirs.”

“At one point, perhaps. Black seems to have dissuaded him.”

Minerva’s look indicates Harry hadn’t told her that, even though Tom _knows_ that Minerva is part of Dumbledore’s Order, that she must know of Harry’s time with Black and the anti-Ministry sentiments he is imparting. “I see,” she says, politic because Tom has never been forthcoming with her or any of the faculty about his feelings toward the Ministry.

“He hasn’t forsaken his parents entirely,” Tom goes on, pleased to know more about a Gryffindor than Minerva does. “He’s finally got a Patronus. A stag.”

Minerva pauses in twisting pasta around her fork. “Excellent,” she says shortly, and returns to her book.

 

Tom realizes his error – his stupid, avoidable error – as he returns to the dungeons that night.

James Potter’s stag should mean nothing to him, not if he hadn’t known them. It may not even mean anything to _Harry_ yet, unless Black or Moody or another veteran had mentioned something to him already. But it had been such a _stark_ revelation – that regardless of how alienated Harry feels from Dumbledore, how righteously indignant he is on Black’s behalf, he fundamentally still belongs to his parents and not Voldemort. He will _never_ belong to Voldemort. So as satisfying as it would be to recruit Dumbledore’s presumed savior, Tom knows he won’t be able to.

But there are other ways to defuse Harry as an opponent. And the boy obviously wants a confidant, a mentor not tangled in Ministry politics. So when Harry had asked for ways out of the castle, Tom had allowed a moment’s flash of happiness before he put on his careful, thoughtful expression. He may get his prophecy yet, and Harry’s loyalty with it.

\---

Dumbledore returns with news from Beauxbatons, though the students only hear of it second- and thirdhand, in rumors that echo in the corridors. Madame Maxime gave the school to Grindelwald, in exchange for his protection. There is not yet any change effected within school policy, but they all expect it. Draco says with confidence that soon none of the Mudbloods will have any school left in Europe that will take them, and Ron gets quite a lot of detention when Professor Flitwick must break up the fist fight that ensues.

Dumbledore looks very old, and very tired. So when he and Harry cross paths on the way to breakfast one morning, and he asks how Occlumency lessons with Snape are faring, Harry can’t even confront him on what the hell he thought would happen. Instead, with a smile as determined as Dumbledore’s own, “Alright, sir. I’m learning a lot.”

And he sort of is, though it’s more in opposition to Snape than because of him. But he hadn’t yet figured out Snape’s first instruction, to bury his thoughts elsewhere, until the next time he sees Voldemort.

He’s been pulling at their connection since Dumbledore’s return, because he needs to know if Voldemort had anything to do with Beauxbatons, since Voldemort had his Knights attack the giants’ camp to begin with, and perhaps he wanted Headmistress Maxime’s school out of it? It’s quite confusing.

In any case, they end up on adjacent sofas in a cramped cottage. Harry looks around curiously. “Where is this?”

Voldemort seems less exasperated with Harry’s non-intimidation than he probably should be. “A hag’s cottage in southern France. Since you are so very concerned about Beauxbatons.”

“Aren’t you?” Harry challenges. “Or were you part of it?”

“I was not.”

“I don’t believe you.”

Voldemort raises a shoulder in a shrug, uninterested in proving himself to a fifteen year old. “It seems quite irrelevant to you. Beauxbatons is a world apart from Hogwarts.”

“It’s not,” Harry says. “What if Grindelwald comes for Hogwarts next? Or for Dumbledore,” he adds with some defiance, this secret of their relationship that Voldemort has told him.

Voldemort’s lips twitch. “I’m flattered, Harry, but you should no more trust me with Hogwarts than Grindelwald.”

“But it’s….” _Home_. The word dies on his lips, because really it’s been _his_ home, but he’s never considered whether normal people, people with families and childhood homes, feel the same. They couldn’t be grateful to it as he was. “You should care about Hogwarts,” he says firmly.

“Perhaps,” Voldemort concedes. “But Grindelwald has scarcely set foot in Britain.”

“And if he does?”

“Do you not trust Dumbledore to keep you safe?”

They both skip the question of whether the Ministry would keep them safe. Harry wonders how much Voldemort already know of Sirius, of Remus, of Harry’s own antipathy for the Ministry. Not that it makes him anything like Voldemort, or more sympathetic to him. “Dumbledore can keep Hogwarts safe,” he says. “But I thought you’d want it to recruit. Like last time, with all the Slytherins.”

Truthfully he’s never spent much time concerned with Voldemort’s true identity. That is a problem for the Ministry or Dumbledore or whoever. Still.

Voldemort clicks his tongue. “Don’t worry yourself with my plans for Hogwarts.”

In frustration, Harry shoves his hand through his hair. “Just _waiting_ for the war….”

But when his hand slips to his collar, he tugs on the chain of the locket – here in the dreamspace because he’d fallen asleep fiddling with it, he supposes. And Voldemort’s eyes go very bright. “Come here, Harry.”

He shoves the chain beneath his collar again. “No.”

But then Voldemort is up, pulling him off the sofa, and he feels quite unable to resist, because of course Voldemort can invade his mind, and that’s all this is. And when Voldemort’s long fingers graze his collarbone, he hisses, but then Voldemort has pulled out the locket. “What?” Harry snaps, moving to take it off his neck, so they aren’t drawn so close together, as he looks up into Voldemort’s pale visage.

But he flips the locket over, popping the clasp with a careless flick of his thumb. “It will open for you now.”

“What is it?” Nothing good, if Voldemort is so very interested in it.

“A place to hide your thoughts,” Voldemort says, dropping the locket heavily against Harry’s chest. “Have you heard of a Pensieve?”

“… No.”

“Look it up. You will find it useful.”

“Useful how?”

“For all of the secrets you are accumulating, clearly.”

Harry glares. “I’m still not keeping _your_ secrets. I went to Dumbledore.”

“You did. And he promptly turned you over to Severus, who will discover everything you don’t want him to find. You will break everyone’s heart.”

In spite of all this, all the time he’s spent with Voldemort, Harry doesn’t feel as though he’s done anything treasonous. Voldemort… well, _trusts_ him is the wrong word, but Voldemort will divulge more to him than anyone else. It will be useful. “I’ll fight for Hogwarts,” he says. “Even if you won’t.”

“Precious.”

Rolling his eyes, Harry reaches for the door. Voldemort steps out of his way, watching him leave.

 

When he wakes, Harry fumbles through his sheets: his glasses where they’d slipped off his face, and the locket where he’d dropped it. He tries the locket. It opens easily.

There’s nothing inside, but both sides of the locket hold a – void, a liquid-looking center where a photo should be. Harry pokes at it; it shimmers.

He shouldn’t trust Voldemort. He _doesn’t_ trust Voldemort. But the locket has already been so useful to him, as though it fortifies his own magic. Lifting _Mind Magics_ from his bedside table, he flips to the index to look up Pensieves.

After he’s got somewhere to hide his plans, he decides he is going to ask Sirius to help him break into the Department of Mysteries.


	7. Chapter 7

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hiiii welcome back.
> 
> I'll put this in its appropriate chapter as well, but blop made beautiful art of Tom and Grindelwald for the WIP Big Bang, go look at it [here](https://hplvwipbigbang.tumblr.com/post/187707588685/first-art-submission-by-blopoooo-for-fault-lines)!
> 
> Fun fact: if you made a drinking game out of all the long dashes in this chapter, you would die.

 

 

Within the month, they begin receiving Muggleborn Beauxbatons students at Hogwarts. Grindelwald had begun to register them and their families, even if he tells them it is merely to study and refine the apparent spontaneous origins of magic, so the most proactive of the students have already fled. Dumbledore and McGonagall enchant a new wing for a dormitory, and the classrooms grow to accommodate another row of desks in each.

Harry watches Hermione have a meltdown one evening in the library. “Why _this_ year?” she demands, slamming her Charms textbook shut. “When we’ve got OWLs!”

Ron hides a grin behind his fist. “I’m sure if you wrote Grindelwald, he’d apologize and hold off ‘til you’ve graduated.”

“This isn’t funny,” Hermione snaps. “And of course it’s worse for them, but none of our professors have enough time for us anyway. Except you,” she says to Harry darkly.

It’s meant to be a provocation, but it’s not even wrong. He’s got one night a week with Moody (useful), one night with Snape (awful and infuriating), and as many hours of Riddle’s office time as he can justify. All of them, and Dumbledore, are scarcely hiding their expectations of him anymore, that he’s meant to be a hero.

He should resent it. He doesn’t. Since there are now rumors that Grindelwald will attack Hogwarts, he knows he needs to act.

And that he probably needs Voldemort.

 

He gets dispensation from Dumbledore to spend Easter holiday at Grimmauld Place, taking the floo directly from his office because nothing else is secure enough. “Give Sirius my best,” Dumbledore says as Harry takes a handful of floo powder. “And tell him that his freedom is near.”

“Yes, sir.” Harry can’t bring himself to tell Dumbledore that he doesn’t believe him. Neither of them do.

It would be better if Remus had had a home of his own, but he doesn’t, living with the werewolves when he’s not staying here with Sirius. “They’ll follow Voldemort regardless,” he says darkly one evening. “Because the Ministry has offered them nothing.”

“Someone needs to kill Greyback,” Sirius says.

Remus gives a minute shrug. He doesn’t speak about Greyback much, but Harry has gathered that the relationship is… complicated. “When the Aurors want to find him, I’ll tell them how.”

Sirius gives a tiny snarl at the word _Aurors_ , as though he’s still part-dog even in human form, and sinks deeper into his armchair.

Grimmauld Place is killing him slowly, suffocating him, and they all know it. They write to Dumbledore, but his relationship with the Ministry is fraught as it is. They write to Moody, and to Sirius’s cousin Andromeda, who’s on the Wizengamot; both say the political climate isn’t one where the Minister is willing to admit any sort of fault or weakness. Freedom shouldn’t be this difficult, and Harry feels himself absorbing Sirius’s reflected resentment.

It’s late on Good Friday, after Remus has already turned in for the night, when Harry approaches Sirius. “Do you know about the prophecy?”

Sirius is a little drunk, because he’s always a little drunk, but he still gives Harry a severe look. “Yeah. Heard it from your parents. Dumbledore doesn’t want you knowing about it.”

It is so infuriating, that the Order discusses him behind his back. “There’s a lot of things Dumbledore doesn’t want me to know.” He’s sunk into the armchair across from Sirius, leaning in conspiratorially. “I want it. And I know where the Ministry keeps it.”

Sirius runs a hand over his worn face. “Harry….”

“I deserve it. I deserve to know.”

“… Yeah, you do.”

So they sit up late, plotting. The Ministry will be closed for the holiday weekend, but Sirius says he’s got a knife that will break in anywhere they need to be. “Where did you get _that_?” Harry asks in wonder.

A faint smile from Sirius. “There’s more dark artifacts in this house than not. I think we’ve put away everything that could kill you, at least. Oh, and….” He gets up, pulls open a drawer, removes a cloth-wrapped package. “Haven’t needed these in awhile,” he says fondly, as he hands Harry one of two mirrors. “If we get separated, we can speak through it. Prongs and I used to use them when we got detentions separately.”

Harry smiles down at the mirror, now reflecting the perspective of Sirius’s. “Brilliant.”

 

He doesn’t _mean_ to fall into Voldemort’s mind that night. But his sleep is restless, turning over all the bits of the plan in his mind, and it seems to attract Voldemort’s attention. _Good_ , Voldemort thinks, cold and clinical as he sifts through Harry’s thoughts, and then he’s pulling Harry into a dreamspace of the Department of Mysteries. There’s a long corridor, a spinning antechamber, and one heavy door opening into a room of glowing orbs.

Harry watches, with Voldemort over his shoulder, but then he turns back. “I won’t give you the prophecy unless you swear to help Hogwarts,” he says seriously. “And to defend it against Grindelwald.”

“As I’ve told you before, vows need a bonder.”

“Liar,” Harry spits, because he’s been deep in the Black family library for the past few days. “Not all of them. Where’s your wand?”

Voldemort gives him a curious look as he reaches into his robes. And Harry is rehearsing the invocation he’s prepared mentally, since he’d had to memorize it to use in his dreams. Lifting his own wand, he touches its tip to Voldemort’s. “ _Siccum Sacramentum_. I, Harry James Potter, vow to share the prophecy with you….”

“Lord Voldemort.”

Harry gives him a dry look. “Really.”

Voldemort clicks his tongue. “You ought not make vows with people you don’t trust, Harry.”

“Yeah, well.” He starts over. “I, Harry James Potter, vow to share the prophecy with you, Lord Voldemort, in exchange for your protection of Hogwarts from Grindelwald and any of his soldiers.”

“You have never performed a vow before in your life,” Voldemort mutters. “If Grindelwald or his soldiers directly invade or attack the premises of Hogwarts, I, Lord Voldemort, will act with the intention of stopping them. This vow will hold through your graduation.”

“It’s not about _my_ safety.”

“You will agree to it or nothing.”

It’s perverse to hope Grindelwald will attack sooner rather than later, then. “Fine. Now you say it.”

“I, Lord Voldemort, vow to protect Hogwarts from Grindelwald and his soldiers in exchange for the prophecy.” The magic of the vow is warm and full now; Voldemort lifts his wand to complete it. “ _Per fides, per animis._ ”

“ _Per fides, per animis_ ,” Harry echoes. Their wands seem slightly magnetic as they separate them.

And then they’re looking at each other in the blue-purple glow of the Department of Mysteries’s sconces. “Wish me luck,” Harry says, stepping backward.

“Yes.”

 

They can’t tell Remus. Not because he’d stop them, just that he would worry. So after breakfast, Harry shoves his invisibility cloak in his pocket and hangs his locket around his throat for magic and luck. They duck into the library to tell Remus they’re going for a walk, and then Sirius apparates them to the visitors’ entrance of the Ministry.

As the lift descends, Sirius shifts into his animagus form, and Harry throws his cloak over himself. They reach the atrium, eerily quiet and empty over the holiday weekend. They would go through the security measures Sirius had known already, so Harry casts a featherlight to evade weight sensors and cold charms to evade heat sensors, and they reach the locked door in the Atrium which led to the stairwell. Harry draws Sirius’s knife.

And then they’re running down the stairs, and the walls transition from the blocky stone of the Atrium to the obsidian walls he’d seen in Voldemort’s vision. The lights along the wall go deep blue. The place feels familiar.

“Here, it’s here,” he mutters as they skid into the circular chamber, a dozen doors surrounding them. But just as he looks around, the walls begin to spin wildly, obscuring which door they’d just come through.

Sirius shifts back. “Hardly matters now,” he says at Harry’s look. “We’ll find a way out afterward.”

So Harry reaches for a door, holding his breath.

They find a room with a vat of brains glowing green in its center, another with poignant tableaux of time loops. After each, Sirius marks the door with a flaming red x, his sunken face illuminated by the light.

But when they open the door to the Hall of Prophecies, Harry’s breath catches. It’s like Voldemort had shown him, white-silver with shelves nearly scraping the vaulted ceiling.

“Row 97,” Harry says, because Voldemort had told him that too. They’re standing before Row 30 now, so Harry turns to run the length of the chamber.

And then there is a cacophony.

Harry looks back to see a gathering assembly of suits of armor, progressing slowly but steadily toward them. Sirius whirls around to follow Harry’s gaze, and then casts a wide Protego between them and the knights. “We’ve only got to outrun them,” he shouts, and then he’s passing Harry, peering up at the shelves.

60s, 70s, 80s. The knights don’t progress any faster, but when Harry ducks into the nearest row, he hears them follow.

97, 97, at the end of the aisle…. He hears Sirius’s claws pounding the stones beside him. He barely looks at the dusty spheres arranged on the shelves on either side of him, labeled with names and dates. The thunder of the knights now clangs in his ears –

And at the end of the row, just a bit above his head, he sees it. _SPT to APWBD – Dark Lord and (?) Harry Potter._ Harry’s breath catching in his throat, he jumps, his fingers closing around the prophecy.

And then there’s a horrible sound behind him – a yelp, and a sword hitting a shelf, shattering a dozen prophecies.

Harry spins to see Sirius in dog form, holding off a group of advancing suits of armor, their swords drawn. “No – !” And he’s running back, casting Protego wildly between them. A sword clangs off it. “Sirius! _Run_!”

They run, back toward the door, but so do the suits. Harry throws open the door, and then they’re in the circular antechamber. He throws open another door, praying it’s the way out.

It’s not – it’s an amphitheatre, old and crumbling, with a veiled archway in the center. And then there’s sounds of the armor behind them, and Harry can only run inside, hoping the archway is a portal of some sort, that it will take them elsewhere –

Sirius shifts back to human, raising his wand. “Back – Harry, _back_ ,” he says with urgency as the armor pours in. And then there’s other sounds – _human_  sounds – and Harry’s heart climbs his throat as he realizes it must be the Aurors.

He’s throwing on his invisibility cloak, and he wants to pull Sirius under it too, but Sirius is shooting bright red disabling spells into the army of knights. And the suits of armor are firing spells back, raising their swords as wands. Sirius is running backwards down the amphitheatre steps, his spells going wild –

“Aurors squad!” barks a voice from the top of the amphitheatre. “Surrender yourself!”

Sirius is whipping a disillusionment around himself, and he’s surrounded by the suits of armor anyway, but he’s going to get caught, he’ll be sent back to Azkaban, Harry will be left homeless without a family again –

So he’s running in, casting Protego and Flipendo and Bombarda, and thank _fuck_ Moody had taught him these things above his level –

And then a knight swings his sword wide, casting an icy spell through it, and it catches Harry in the chest.

He stumbles, wilting into a seat out of the aisle, clutching his chest. His hand comes away sticky with blood already. He is going light-headed, but he needs to fight – Sirius, the Aurors –

The entire mass of people has run down to the floor, encircling the veil, and the Aurors are barely fighting through the suits of armor. Harry is running down the stairs too, but he’s woozy, and the stairs are worn and slick, and when he’s just losing his footing –

A gloved hand grabs his shoulder, pulling him upright.

He knows before he looks, the way their magic sparks against one another’s. “Oh, he mutters, twisting in Voldemort’s grasp. “You’re bleeding, too.”

Voldemort’s robes shimmer with blood, though he doesn’t seem to feel it. “I told you to be careful,” he says, drawing his wand to heal them both, lifting the bloodstains from their clothing.

“… Did you?” He peels the robes from his chest – oh. And his invisibility cloak, he realizes. Clearly Voldemort could see through it, even if nobody else could.

But then, a shout. Sirius is cornered before the veil, and he’s flailing, and Harry’s got the impression that something horrible is going to happen a moment before it does –

With a look of irritation, Voldemort casts a bright light that pulses and shakes the entire amphitheatre. The entire mass of people collapse to the stone. And Harry gasps, pulling out of his grasp. “No -- !”

“Obliviate. They will survive.” And with that, he grabs Harry and apparates them both.

Harry lands heavily, swaying back on his heels as nausea rises. Unlike Sirius’s apparition, careful and precise, Voldemort seems to slam him down at their location. Wanker.

So he leans along the back of the sofa before him, looking at their surroundings. The same cottage he’d seen in his dream.

Oh. This was the first time he’d seen Voldemort in the flesh. It scarcely felt different.

And when he looks back, Voldemort’s got his wand pointed at him.

“Hey!” Harry protests, reaching for his own, brandishing it. “What the hell.”

With an unimpressed look, Voldemort summons his wand and the prophecy at once.

The prophecy suits Voldemort more than it suited Harry himself, sphere glittering in his pale fingers. “You have not heard it,” Voldemort says.

“No. Ah, haven’t you?” Harry asks, a question that has bothered him for awhile now. “Since you tried to kill me for it and all.”

“Impertinent,” Voldemort mutters. When Harry only glares, he says, “I have known it secondhand. I suspect an incomplete version.”

“You killed my parents because you’d gotten it _wrong_?”

Instead of answering him, Voldemort casts two spells: a silencing spell, and a binding curse. Harry should be scared. Instead, he’s just indignant.

And then, the prophecy. Voldemort casts a blue bubble in which to place it; once it is settled, it begins to speak in an ethereal voice:

“ _The one with the power to vanquish the Dark Lord approaches. Born to those who have thrice defied him, born as the seventh month dies. And the Dark Lord will mark him as his equal, but he will have power the Dark Lord knows not. And either must die at the hand of the other for neither can live while the other survives._ ”

Voldemort listens twice, and only when he has dropped into an armchair pensively does he release Harry. Quietly, Harry takes a seat across from him.

“Then we must kill each other.”

Voldemort sounds thoughtful, even detached. Harry’s stomach has curled in on itself. “No,” he says. “I won’t kill you. Or anyone else.”

“Fate has already decreed that you will.”

“I won’t,” he repeats fiercely. “There must be a way to break a prophecy.”

“There is not. As you would know from Divination class.”

This man, this intimate stranger who somehow already knows his life and his soul. Harry can’t think of a single thing to say.

Voldemort reaches for a quill on the end table. “I will make you a Portkey to Diagon Alley.”

“Wait. No. That can’t be all.”

“… No, it’s not. Give me the locket.” And Voldemort is leaning in, aiming his wand between Harry’s eyes. “As you would not be able to conceal these memories on your own.”

Slowly, feeling as though this were a turning point of trusting Voldemort, of being co-conspirators, Harry lifts the locket over his head. Voldemort withdraws his memories in a silvery strand, dropping them into the locket’s frame. And then… all of this, from the Ministry onward, is only as tangible as a long-ago dream. It’s small and insignificant enough that he’s certain he can bury the rest with Occlumency. He takes the locket back, Voldemort letting it slip from his long fingers, and re-places it beneath his collar.

“And Hogwarts will be safe.” Harry says it steadily, looking into Voldemort’s crimson gaze.

“From Grindelwald,” Voldemort agrees.

Harry makes a noise of frustration. “There’s an entire generation of wizards there. You should _want_ to protect it. If you want an actual world to rule over or whatever.”

There’s a flicker of… amusement across Voldemort’s features, Harry is sure of it. Leaning in, placing one placating hand over Harry’s: “Hogwarts will be safe. You will be safe. Go home, Harry.”

He pulls his hand from beneath Voldemort’s glove. “Good. Thanks. … Could you make the Portkey near the Leaky Cauldron?” He knows the streets back to Grimmauld Place, and he doesn’t want Voldemort to know precisely where he’s staying anyway.

“Yes.”

And that’s it. Harry flips the quill in his fingers, and he is gone from France and Voldemort.

He pulls the invisibility cloak over him as he takes the long walk back from the Leaky Cauldron to Grimmauld Place, and it is only then that he can really consider the prophecy.

He will have to kill Voldemort.

None of the magic he’s learned so far has really prepared him for a duel to the death. He could do something like Diffindo to Voldemort’s throat, but that’s… awful. He doesn’t want this, he doesn’t want to be a killer, even as he’s known for years that that’s really what Dumbledore intended for him.

At least Hogwarts will be safe.

He had left the prophecy with Voldemort, which seems best. Not that Voldemort would have conceded it to him anyway, he supposes. Still, he’s pulled the locket from his collar, flipping it open and sloshing the memory inside from one side to the other as he walks. The prophecy, ensconced in its blue light – the woman’s voice echoing “ _Neither can live while the other survives_.”

His chest is tight by the time he reaches Grimmauld Place, and he is so preoccupied that he might be excused for the utter stupidity of not having an alibi when he walks through the door.

There’s the sound of a kettle from the kitchen, a bit of clattering, and then Remus calling, “Sirius? Harry?”

His heart stutters. “Just me.”

Remus strides in, looking understandably concerned. “Where’s Sirius?”

“… Out. We got separated. He’ll be back soon.” And before Remus can ask anything more of him, Harry scurries to his bedroom.

Taking Sirius’s mirror from his pocket, he settles onto his bed. “Sirius?” Nothing. “ _Sirius_ ,” he says into the mirror with more urgency. He’d assumed Sirius would get out, that he’d shake off the Obliviate before the Aurors did, but of course that didn’t have to be true –

And then Sirius’s face appears as he picks up the mirror, and they both exhale in relief. “Sirius,” Harry says again, just to hear himself say it. “Where are you? Can we come get you?”

“Harry, what the _hell_.”

Harry freezes, unsure what Sirius even still recalls. “What? I’m here, see?” He lifts the mirror to show Sirius his bedroom. “Did you get out? Sirius, tell me you’re safe.”

“Yeah,” Sirius says in a sigh.

“And… what do you remember?” Harry asks, and it’s shit to hope Voldemort’s Obliviate took all of his memories, but worse if he knew….

Sirius fixes him with a stare, intense even through the mirror. “What the _fuck_ have you gotten yourself into?”

Harry feels his heart in his mouth. “What?”

“V—Voldemort was there for the prophecy too, wasn’t he? I assume he’d had one of the Knights put a tracking spell on it – Rookwood, maybe Lucius. And then – and then – “

Harry swallows. “Were you hurt?”

“Don’t change the fucking subject.”

“Really,” he says urgently. “I lost you in the Aurors, and then I got stabbed….” His hand drifts toward his chest, pressing to the new skin.

“You got _stabbed_?”

“I’m fine now. And then – Voldemort took the prophecy. And Obliviated the Aurors. So you’re safe, they haven’t got to know about you. Or me.”

Sirius’s expression has gone darker and darker. “You saw Voldemort. And he didn’t kill you.”

“I got out.”

“ _Bullshit_. You apparated together.”

Fuck. Fuck. Maybe Voldemort had good intentions, not Obliviating Sirius with the rest of them, but more likely he did it just to make Harry’s life harder. “I can’t tell you yet,” he says, if only because he doesn’t know how much to reveal. “But – I’m safe. Hogwarts will be safe. And I heard the prophecy.”

“Did you?”

“Yeah, and… I’ll tell you later. In person.”

Sirius’s mouth goes tight. “You are not old enough to have secrets,” he bites out.

“Piss _off_ ,” Harry snaps, and for a moment he thinks of pitching the mirror at the wall. He’s old enough to have a prophecy condemning him to a mutually assured death, old enough to do more for Hogwarts’s safety than the bloody Ministry, and Sirius’s hostility is such a bad end to the day.

“Harry, stay the fuck away from him, he’ll kill you – “

“Stop it, _stop it_.” And he’s smashing a pillow over the mirror to drown it out. When Sirius’s voice stops, his stomach drops with the fear that the mirror had broken, but no, Sirius is just very drawn and gaunt, looking into the distance when Harry lifts the mirror again.

Then: “I’m not coming back to Grimmauld Place.”

“What? You’ve got to.”

“I’m fine here,” Sirius says. “And – happier. That house will eat you alive.”

“But the wards, and Dumbledore….”

“Fuck the wards _and_ Dumbledore,” Sirius says, his expression going steely. “Just… we all take risks for our own survival.”

“… Okay,” Harry says, though of course it’s not. “Can I give the mirror to Remus? So you can tell him, too.”

“Yeah. And Harry – “ Sirius lifts the mirror a little higher. “I hate whatever you’ve gotten into. Be careful.”

“I will, yeah.”

 

Whatever conversation Sirius and Remus have is done behind a silencing spell, and it makes the waiting so much worse. Finally Harry throws on his Muggle clothes and leaves to get takeaway for dinner. And when he returns, setting the paper bags down on the kitchen island, Remus hovers as though he’d like to hug Harry, but he’s not sure he can. “Sirius says not to ask,” he offers.

“… Yeah. Thanks.” He pops open the carton of saag paneer, and they eat in the dire silence of Grimmauld Place.

\---

Tom is going to _kill_ Snape.

The second half of the prophecy… the half that ties his destiny to Harry’s, that yokes their very lives together….

Severus had told him he’d been thrown out of the pub prematurely, and Tom has no reason to trust this is true. Severus is a pawn between him and Dumbledore, a delicate position at best, and giving Tom just enough of the prophecy to ruin him….

Yes, he is going to kill Severus.

And Harry, apparently.

Perhaps that is why they share physical injuries. The prophecy will bleed them both. Tom had known of Harry’s injury at the Ministry just as it’d happened, when he’d felt a slash across his own chest, his robes going sticky with blood. He’d been spending the Easter holiday in France, so apparating back to England and through the Ministry’s wards while bleeding profusely had been… unpleasant.

He has already shrunken down the prophecy, putting it as the size of a pea within a ring setting. To literally carry his fate with him… that, at least, seems appropriate.

\---

Late on Easter Sunday, Harry takes the floo from Grimmauld Place back to Hogwarts. Remus hugs him tightly, despite their mutual discomfort, and tells him to be safe.

He expects that he will be called into a very terrible meeting with Dumbledore, but on Monday morning he finds that there’s no need. One, because Dumbledore isn’t even at Hogwarts, his place at the head table conspicuously empty. Two, when the _Prophet_ arrives, Harry finds himself staring down at the headline: “ _Voldemort’s attack on Dept of Myst: what we know_.”

Thank god, thank god. There is no mention of Harry or Sirius anywhere, as the Aurors’ Obliviate was thorough. Harry looks upon the photograph of Aurors filing out of the amphitheatre as a sort of half-remembered dream, though he’s found he can recall it better while wearing the locket.

Reading on, he finds that Voldemort left the memories of _himself_ in the Aurors’ minds: that he broke in, stole the prophecy, and escaped. It is a neat, simple narrative. With no witnesses to contradict it, Harry would be quite safe.

Which is why it’s so curious that Voldemort left Sirius’s mind untouched.

Really, it doesn’t matter. Everyone who’d gone home for the Easter holiday returns back later that day, and when Ron, Hermione, and Neville find Harry, they are only normal amounts of concerned for him. McGonagall doesn’t spare a second glance at Harry. He expects Dumbledore won’t either.

It should be fine. It will be fine. Until each night when his head hits the pillow and he’s left awake in the dark with the thought that he will really, truly have to kill Voldemort.

 

The next few days are tense. Cornelius Fudge, completely overwhelmed by the threat of both Grindelwald and Voldemort, resigns. A great many speculations are run in the Prophet, and by the end of the week the corners of Hogwarts are filled with whispered rumors that Dumbledore will succeed him.

“The Ministry would never appoint Dumbledore,” Neville says as they’re walking to Moody’s tutoring session. “Not with Grindelwald.” Because Neville knows enough about Dumbledore’s past too – from Harry, from Moody, from Augusta Longbottom.

But it seems like there’s no one else. There is a dearth of powerful wizards in their world, because the last war had killed them all.

Voldemort must be pleased.

Moody is teaching them atmospheric spells now, of embers and ice and lightning surrounding them in spheres. By the end of the session, Harry’s hair is stuck up in every direction, and Neville’s lips are chapped from Harry’s frost spell. Still, they’re both loose and happy as they pack up, with Harry glowing the same as at the end of a satisfying Quidditch game.

And then he remembers why he’s been so anxious and unhappy this week. Why he’d left the locket in his bedside table, lest Moody try Legilimency on him tonight for some reason. But Moody will answer anything for them, including the one question Harry really needs to be answered.

So he gestures to Neville to go on ahead. “Tell you later,” he says, though he probably won’t. And then Moody, clearly watching behind himself with his magical eye, sets down his staff.

When they are alone: “What does it feel like to kill someone?”

Moody’s mouth puckers below his scar tissue. “Depends on the person,” he says. “For you, I expect, fine.”

“… Really?” He doesn’t know whether to be offended or pleased.

“You’re a responsible lad. Albus thinks you’ll do what you need to, when the moment comes.”

 _It will kill me. It will literally kill me_. It’s a thought he hasn’t been able to get out of his head this week. Maybe it’s a blessing, though, that he won’t have to live with himself afterward.

Instead, he offers Moody a wan smile. “So, nobody’s even pretending I’m not – the one to do it, anymore.”

“The Chosen One,” Moody says grimly, because the phrase had been in the Prophet recently. “No. But don’t let it go to your head.”

Harry snorts. “It’s not exactly an honor.” And he lets Moody walk him out, a gnarled hand on his shoulder.

 

There is still no Minister the following Monday, but Dumbledore has returned to Hogwarts. And when Harry is delivered a summons from Fawkes during DADA that morning, Riddle looks annoyed but just waves Harry out.

What he enters Dumbledore’s office, he finds the headmaster looking as if he’s just returned from a long journey, with a few satchels open and some glittering artifacts half-unpacked. “Hello, sir.”

“Harry. Come in.” Dumbledore spells an armchair to simply scoop him up, trundling toward the desk. Harry pulls his robes up around his knees, feeling small. “I expect Hogwarts has been in at least as much of a tizzy as the Ministry. I apologize for my absence.”

“Hogwarts is alright,” Harry says, not that he’s any sort of spokesperson for it. “Safe, you know.”

Dumbledore hums, passing Harry a plum lolly before popping one in his own mouth. And it makes Harry feel even smaller. “More pressing than that – Sirius has not returned to Grimmauld Place.”

“… How is that more pressing?”

“Because if he cannot provide a home for you over the summer break, you are once more in need of shelter.”

Oh. It was the end of April now, so questions of summer break would become more relevant soon. “I don’t know where he is, sir,” Harry says, because he doesn’t. And even if he did, it’s what Sirius told him to say. They are obligated to keep one another’s secrets. “We got separated in Diagon Alley.”

“The Black family has a great many properties,” Dumbledore says. “But Grimmauld Place is the only one protected by a Fidelius. And more pointedly, protected from the Knights of Walpurgis.”

He’s right. Anywhere Sirius could get into by birthright, so could Bellatrix and Narcissa. Hell, maybe even Voldemort, depending on who he actually is. “I don’t know,” Harry repeats. “I’ve talked to him. He says he’s fine.”

“Yes, well.” Dumbledore pops the hard part of the lolly from its stick. “If the situation doesn’t improve between now and June, I recommend you spend the summer here. The castle is as impenetrable as anywhere in Britain.”

“Oh.” He goes through a flurry of emotions, because of the obvious question of why he couldn’t have lived at Hogwarts to begin with, skipping the awful fucking Dursleys. “Sure. Is that… normal?”

Dumbledore shakes his head with a small smile. “I’m afraid you’ll be left to your own devices much of the time. The faculty and staff will travel. The elves would enjoy your company, at least.”

Having the castle to himself sounds like an opportunity, though he doesn’t yet know for what. “Yes, sir. I’d like that. If Sirius isn’t back to Grimmauld Place then, that is.”

“Excellent.” Dumbledore leans back in his chair, studying Harry with a deliberate gaze that might be an attempt at Legilimency. “Is that all?”

Suddenly, he feels the desperate need to rebel against Dumbledore’s infantilization – the too-big chair and the lolly and the lack of any sort of useful information. “Is it, sir?” he asks dryly. “I expected you’d bring me here about Voldemort.”

“Ah. Yes.” Dumbledore smooths his beard. “And what of him?”

His temper flares. He _knows_ about Voldemort, but Dumbledore doesn’t know he knows, and…. “Nevermind.” He’s reaching for his bookbag.

“Harry. Really.”

“I know he went for the prophecy.”

“Yes.”

“And you still don’t want to tell me about it?”

Dumbledore heaves a sigh. “I had hoped you would be deterred by the nature of the prophecy. Voldemort was driven mad by his preoccupation with it – “

“No, he wasn’t.”

Dumbledore gives him a curious look. “His actions have not been those of a reasonable man, I’m sure you agree.”

“But – the prophecy is real, sir. I’m telling you now that I already believe in it. Knowing more about it would only help. Since Voldemort knows everything now.”

Dumbledore braces his worn hands on the desk, rises. “Come with me.”

Harry follows Dumbledore to a niche in his office, closed off and glowing with an ethereal light from a carved cauldron. “This,” Dumbledore says, stirring with a crystal rod, “is a Pensieve. I don’t expect you’ve encountered one before?”

Harry could not be more grateful that he’d left the locket in his room today. “No, sir.”

“It is used for storing and reviewing memories. Like so.” With the crystal rod he dredges up a memory of a smoky back room, and a younger Dumbledore sitting across from Sybil Trelawney. Harry follows him into the Pensieve.

“Sybil is not aware that she delivered your prophecy,” the present day Dumbledore says as his former self is just ending a disappointing job interview. “It seems best not to tell her. She has never known the danger she is in.”

Harry is watching Trelawney throw one of her many shawls over her shoulders, moving to get up – and then, abruptly, she goes slack in her chair. “ _The one with the power to vanquish the Dark Lord approaches. Born to those who have thrice defied him, born as the seventh month dies. And the Dark Lord will mark him as his equal, but he will have power the Dark Lord knows not –_ “

“Out! Out!” comes a voice beyond the door. And Dumbledore is up, casting a silencing charm over the room before he’s grabbing the doorknob, and Aberforth stands there with a figure wrapped in a dark cloak just thrashing out of his grasp.

And then the memory ends.

Harry is pulling back from the Pensieve slowly, trying to make his expression surprised or something more appropriate. “That’s it?”

“Unfortunately, yes.” Dumbledore gives no indication that he’s baldly lying to Harry’s face. “Voldemort heard of this prophecy, and he identified you as the child in question. But Harry – apart from my previous warnings about the self-fulfilling nature of the prophecy, there is another warning I must offer you.”

 _Tell me I need to die. Please, please just tell me_. “Yes, sir?”

“The prophecy may not have applied to you at all.”

“… Sir?”

“There was another child born at the end of July, whose parents had fought Voldemort – “

“Neville,” Harry says in an exhalation. He’d never thought of it – Neville spoke so infrequently about his parents….

“Yes.”

“But Voldemort chose me.”

“Yes,” Dumbledore says again, looking faintly surprised that he’d reached this conclusion.

“So it’s still _my_ prophecy.” He couldn’t say why he feels so possessive of it. Only that he does.

“Well.” Dumbledore braces his hands along the edge of the Pensieve. “Yes. In a sense. But I have kept it from you – from both of you – lest you be compelled to act on it. And so that it may not disrupt your friendship.”

Friendship. They’ve hardly kept their dating a secret. “But you told Moody to tutor Neville too.”

“I did.”

“And if the prophecy could be about either of us, and Voldemort’s killed both our families, and – “

Dumbledore raises a hand. “Neville’s parents are not dead,” he says slowly. “They were tortured into insanity by Bellatrix Lestrange in the days after Voldemort’s apparent death. We had extended them the same protections as your parents, but in the aftermath….” He heaves a deep sigh. “Truly, I think it would hurt Neville, to know how the prophecy has also affected him.”

Dumbledore stops short of forbidding Harry from saying anything, but that’s clearly the implication, and of course Harry’s not going to agree to it. “Oh,” he says, fishing for an appropriate-yet-noncommittal response. “It has, yeah.”

Dumbledore is drawing a cover over his Pensieve, bringing Harry back into the larger part of the office. “So now you know the prophecy,” he says. “And in that regard, at least, you and Voldemort are on equal footing.”

One last attempt. “Sir… do you think I have a chance at defeating Voldemort?”

Dumbledore’s expression becomes no less grave as he says, “Yes, Harry, I do.”

 _Liar_. Perhaps for a well-intentioned reason, perhaps he thinks Harry would run if he were honest about his fate. If that’s it, he doesn’t know Harry very well. “Thank you, sir.” And then he is allowed to go.

 

Before bed, he is fiddling with his own Pensieve, sloshing the memory of the Ministry inside. And then, there’s a glimpse of another memory, one he doesn’t recognize. Something at Hogwarts.

When he dreams, it comes into focus. He’s in a toilet, looking down at a stone floor covered in water. And there’s a girl, who’d fallen face-down with her dark hair spreading like a stain around her head. But from her unnatural pose, the pallor of her curling hands, she is obviously dead.

And Harry is looking down at himself, his own shiny dress shoes. The puddles splash up his ankles, too cold for a proper dream, as he turns to run.

That’s what it feels like to kill someone, Harry thinks as he wakes with a jolt. He can’t fall back asleep that night.

 

Each successive night gets worse. Sometimes it’s the girl in the toilet again, sometimes it’s an old woman in a cluttered pink home, sometimes it’s a wealthy family in an aging manor. These dreams haven’t got the texture of sharing Voldemort’s mind, and he’s not in them anyway. But night after night, Harry watches himself murder those innocent people.

By the end of that week, he is sleep-deprived and miserable, and it’s no excuse for what he does but it’s the only excuse he’s got. He’s just getting back from an Occlumency lesson (and Snape is _definitely_ looking for more information on Sirius, on Dumbledore’s orders, but what the hell, let him look) to find Neville alone in their dorm, repotting a magnetic cactus. “Hi,” he says, barely looking up from his plant. “Still bad?”

Harry would vent about Occlumency to Neville every time. “Getting worse.” He drops his bookbag hard as though to accentuate it.

“I saw McGonagall today.” Neville’s voice takes on a strange pitch. “She asked – if you intended to see Sirius over the summer.”

For Merlin’s sake. “And what did you say?”

Neville looks a bit offended at the brittleness in Harry’s tone. “That I don’t know where Sirius is and neither do you. And even if you _did_ , I wouldn’t tell her. Obviously.”

And because Harry is so fucking worn down from all the adults in his life trying to manipulate him, and Neville’s just going to get the brunt of his breaking point. “What, like you didn’t tell me your parents are alive?”

Neville flinches as though slapped, but he recovers well. “And like you didn’t tell me your aunt and uncle are dead,” he agrees, though his voice shakes. “What the _hell_ has that got to do with anything?”

“Everyone else is keeping secrets from me, guess it’s fine if you do too – “

“Piss off – “

“ _You_ piss off,” Harry snaps. “How’m I supposed to kill Voldemort if nobody will even tell me – what he does?” _What he is_.

Neville’s face looks different with his jaw clenched, all the softness replaced with hard lines. He doesn’t speak, but only grabs his book and cactus before storming out.

And Harry sinks onto his bed. He knows he’s been an arsehole and that Neville didn’t deserve that, but….

But.

He hadn’t thought much about Voldemort’s victims individually. He hadn’t had time. But to hear about torture by his regime…. War was one thing, cruelty was another. And he feared he was in too deep to get out.

He falls asleep that night holding the locket and thinking of the Longbottoms, perversely hoping it could show him more. But as this seems to be some sort of memory palace containing only Voldemort’s direct victims, he instead dreams of a battlefield. And halfway through the night, he wakes up with the taste of blood in his mouth.

 

He and Neville don’t speak for days. Ron and Hermione each individually beg Harry to just apologize, though they don’t know what had happened. He can’t, and eventually he begins avoiding them too so he won’t have to hear it any longer. He deteriorates.

One night, he’s brought his bookbag to dinner so he can do his homework in the library afterward, as the Gryffindor dorm is stifling. And just as he’s leaving the Great Hall, Dumbledore enters from the corridor. He might have been waiting. “Ah, Harry. Would you spare a moment?”

Please god no, he hasn’t yet forgiven Dumbledore for lying about the prophecy and it’s just been a bad day already. “Ah….”

“Unfortunately,” comes a crisp voice behind him, “Mr. Potter’s got detention with me tonight. Perhaps another time, Albus?”

Professor Riddle’s hand is placed so gently on Harry’s shoulder, to keep him from turning around in bewilderment. He keeps his face indifferent as Dumbledore looks over the pair of them.

“Yes, yes,” he sighs. “It will wait another day. Goodnight to you both.” And he steps away.

“Come,” Riddle says shortly, and Harry is following him down the corridor toward the dungeons.

When they’re out of earshot: “… Sir?”

“You seemed desperate not to speak to Dumbledore.”

 _I was_. “Oh,” he says instead. “Ah, thank you.”

“Though you are now obligated to stay for a time,” Riddle says, unlocking his office door. “I assume you have homework.”

“Yeah.” He still can’t stop _looking_ at Riddle, watching his expression for some indication of… intimacy, or collusion, or whatever this is. Taking a seat at a coffee table in the corner: “Thank you,” he says again, and Riddle only inclines his head.

The homework before him unfortunately is History of Magic, and his attention wanders while he’s staring down at the textbook. Riddle looks like he’s marking their essays from last week, fingers cramped around his quill as he notates them in his small, precise handwriting.

Harry looks away.

Their History of Magic chapter is about a war – not Grindelwald’s or Voldemort’s wars, which would have at least been useful, but an earlier one. Harry’s stuck on an illustration of a battlefield, the limbs of the fallen soldiers twitching quite gruesomely, until Riddle makes a noise. “Harry.”

“What? Oh.” Mindlessly he’d been jiggling his crossed legs, one knee banging against the sofa’s arm. “Sorry.”

Wordlessly, Riddle _accio_ s his textbook from his hands, to look upon the page himself. “Ah.”

Because Harry is bold and sleep-deprived enough to think he and Riddle have any sort of rapport again, he asks the same question he’d asked Moody: “What do you think it feels like to kill somebody?”

“A soldier? They are rather duty-bound to fighting.”

“No, not a soldier. A… you know.” A terrorist. Perhaps Voldemort was a general of sorts, commanding his Knights, but nobody ever spoke of him as such. His war had always been illicit.

“This should not be your war. You are a child.”

“It is, though. Because….” It would sound ridiculous to say _Because of fate_ , even if he’d surmised that most wizards believed in such a thing. “Because it always has been. I don’t mind.”

“Of course you don’t,” Riddle says without mirth. “I imagine killing someone feels like your soul is being rent.”

“Does it hurt?”

“Yes.”

“Oh. Okay.” He takes his textbook from midair, where Riddle has levitated it. He supposes it doesn’t much matter, when he’s going to die too.

Riddle returns to marking, and Harry gets out a quill to take notes in his textbook’s margin. The silence is… comfortable. Being locked away from the rest of the school is comfortable.

His rapport with Riddle is shaky and uncertain, but he’d like to try again. The man is stoic, composed, alone. But he’s honest with Harry, and he doesn’t _want_ anything from Harry, which feels like a rarity these days. And he’s just… steadying. It’s nice.

 

The dorm is quiet when Harry returns just before curfew – Ron is asleep, Dean and Seamus are in the common room, and Neville is out on Prefect’s rounds. Harry drops onto his bed and suddenly he’s exhausted, asleep before his eyes are closed. He takes the opportunity gratefully.

 

And then there’s a hand on his shoulder, shaking him awake. “Ugh – “ He throws a hand up, squinting into a lit wand. When he sees it’s Neville, he sort of flinches.

“Harry, shut up, there’s no time. The Aurors have come for Dumbledore.”

Harry, still groggy: “To make him Minister?”

“No. For sedition.” Neville bites out the word. “Where’s your cloak?”

Finally Harry’s mind is awake enough to comprehend this crisis. “Oh, shit.” Rolling out of bed, he pulls his invisibility cloak from the lowest bedside drawer. He throws it over himself and Neville, and they’re running from the dorm.

Neville says the Aurors had been going for Dumbledore’s office, and by the time they reach that corridor, they can already hear voices resounding on the stone. A _lot_ of voices. And then everything is getting colder….

Dementors. They’ve brought Dementors.

Dumbledore has descended from his tower, hands folded neatly as he stands before a formation of Aurors. The head one, a man Harry doesn’t recognize, is reading from a very long scroll: “… In accordance, you will be housed in Azkaban until the time of your trial.”

“No,” Harry says in a strangled whisper. He wants to run the rest of the way down the staircase, to tell the Aurors they’ve made a mistake, but of course they don’t care; they hate Dumbledore and would take any pretext to get him out of the school. But as he moves, a Dementor lifts its hooded head to seemingly look in his direction, and his knees go weak. Neville pushes him pinned against the bannister to keep him upright and still.

There are others who have turned out for this midnight ambush: McGonagall and Madam Pomfrey are side by side, and Flitwick’s got a hand on his wand even if the Aurors haven’t yet noticed it. The Head Boy and Girl had both also been out, and so had Terry Boot, Ravenclaw’s Prefect. Still, the Aurors outnumber them two to one. They had come prepared for a bitter fight.

The Auror has continued to read: “Should you intend to appeal this decision, a Wizengamot representative will be offered to you within a month of your initial arrest – “

“I will not,” Dumbledore says, his voice cutting through the Auror’s drone.

“… Pardon?”

“Albus,” McGonagall murmurs beside him, looking minutely horrified.

“My time in Azkaban is overdue, I think. It will be illuminating.” Shaking back his sleeves, he offers his thin wrists.

This is wrong, this is terrible. Harry is reaching for his wand to cast a Patronus, to drive back the Dementors and distract the Aurors – but then there is a hand clamped on his shoulder. “Don’t.”

Riddle, behind him, holding him as though the invisibility cloak weren’t even there. Neville looks back wide-eyed, and Harry wants to resist, but – But. The corridor crackles with an unfought fight as Dumbledore holds out his wrists and another Auror, edging forward like a struck dog, snaps glowing magic-enervating manacles on them.

“Of course,” Dumbledore says, his gaze flitting over the assembled crowd, including where Harry and Neville stand, and then to Tom above them. “I must warn you, Rufus, that I will only have truly the school when none here are loyal to me.”

The Auror with the scroll gives him a dry look. “Perhaps you should leave questions of loyalty for another time. Will you come with us?”

“Yes. Take my floo.”

“We will take the front door,” Rufus says tightly.

The Aurors fall into a formation around Dumbledore, and then since nobody tells them otherwise, the faculty are following. Riddle has moved past them both, to fall in step with McGonagall. Quietly, still under the cloak, Harry and Neville follow.

McGonagall is doing her best to keep pace with Dumbledore, to speak to him through the formation: “The board has already heard, I expect…. Malfoy must have had a hand in it….”

“He wouldn’t be the only one,” Dumbledore says gravely.

“Who?” McGonagall demands. “If Voldemort – “

“Minerva!” an Auror admonishes her.

She fixes him with a death glare. “If Voldemort intends to attack Hogwarts,” she bites out in defiance, “then we must make arrangements immediately. I’ll write the parents today, we’ll have the train here tomorrow….”

“Please don’t,” Dumbledore tells her. “Our students are safer here than perhaps anywhere in Britain. Fortify the castle. Voldemort’s interests lie elsewhere.”

(Do they? Suddenly Harry deeply regrets not speaking to Dumbledore earlier tonight. If he knows something about Voldemort’s intent that Harry doesn’t…. But it’s too late, it’s too fucking late.)

McGonagall lifts her glasses to run a hand down her face. “Our solicitors will be at Azkaban in the morning,” she tells the head Auror.

“Excellent.”

Dumbledore clicks his tongue, somehow the least distressed person in the entry hall. “I expect I’ll learn quite a lot in Azkaban,” he assures McGonagall. “Come, Rufus.”

The Auror grimaces. They go, and the Dementors after them, but the chill of their presence remains. The faculty peel off, and then Harry and Neville are left standing there.

“I’ve got to be out for another hour,” Neville says lowly, dipping from beneath the cloak. “Walk you back up to the dorm?”

“No. I can. Thanks.” Still wrapped in his cloak, he takes the stairs.

But he’s only one flight up when he changes his mind. Pivoting on the steps, he returns downstairs, taking the passage to the dungeon.

The light is on in Riddle’s office – Harry doesn’t even stop to think that it’s peculiar he wasn’t in his quarters instead – and the door is unlocked. Slipping off his cloak, he lets himself in, sad and furious and alone.

Riddle’s in shirtsleeves now, his robe hanging on a hook by the hearth. Nagini sleeps before the fire. Looking up: “It’s past curfew.”

“… I know that.” And if Riddle were going to scold him, it should have been earlier, on the stairs. Under his invisibility cloak. “Dumbledore – that was awful. Why didn’t Professor McGonagall do something? Why didn’t _you_?”

The atmosphere of the office is nothing like just a few hours prior, Harry doing homework on the sofa. This is tense, wild. Still, Riddle moves to the sofa in the corner of his office, gesturing Harry onto the one across from him. “The Ministry is going to make everything very difficult at Hogwarts soon. I’m sure Minerva thinks of her own continued presence here as harm reduction.”

“They can’t just throw people in Azkaban!”

“Clearly they can.”

“He had something to tell me. And I’ve been – we’ve been – “ Harry shoves his hand through his hair in agitation.

“You’ve avoided him.”

He probably flinches. “Was it obvious?” When Riddle lifts a shoulder in a shrug, Harry says, “Yeah, I have. He wouldn’t tell me about – about Voldemort. Even though I need to know. And now I just – “ He breaks off, looking away to collect himself.

He expects Riddle to say something. To tell him what to do, even, and it wouldn’t be entirely unwelcome if he had. Instead, silence stretches between them. And maybe it’s just out of awkwardness, maybe it’s something else, but Harry is compelled to keep talking. “Because I’ve got to die,” he says, not looking at Riddle so he hasn’t got to see his reaction. “Voldemort’s got to kill me, and Dumbledore won’t talk to me about it, and _Moody_ won’t talk to me about it, and Sirius is nearly _gone_ now – “ And then his voice cracks, and he’s shoving his face in his hands, and he can’t breathe. “Sorry,” he mutters through his fingers, even if he couldn’t look at Riddle yet.

Quiet. Then, Riddle, in comforting dispassion, says, “If it’s fate, then there’s nothing to be done for it.”

“… Yeah.” It shouldn’t help. It does. “I just don’t know how to tell them,” he says. How to explain to his friends that they’ll be planning a life without him, that even if he lives to graduate from Hogwarts he likely won’t live much beyond that.

He should break up with Neville. He doesn’t deserve another loss.

There’s no reason why Riddle should be able to follow his line of thought, yet he seems to. “They understand the concept of _war_ , certainly,” he says. “And that there must be casualties.”

“I hate this.”

“Yes.”

Finally Harry looks up, a wry smile on his lips. “I guess it doesn’t really matter if you’d take me as an apprentice, now.”

It’s meant as a bleak joke, but Riddle’s expression doesn’t shift. “That is a conversation for the morning.”

“Right.”

And somehow, he ends up with his bare feet pulled under him, his head falling back against the sofa’s arm. Riddle doesn’t tell him to get out, so he doesn’t. It has been so long since he’s truly slept.

Before his eyes shut, he asks sleepily, “How could you tell that we were underneath my cloak?”

Riddle barely glances up from his book. “I can always find your magic.”

“Oh.” It’s a nice thought. His eyes fall closed.

 

Tom locks the office door, with Harry still asleep inside on his sofa, an hour later. Under other circumstances he might have ushered him out, if only to avoid his colleagues’ concerns of propriety later, but tomorrow is going to be such chaos anyway, it hardly matters. Anyway, he left Nagini in there with him as well.

Dumbledore is out of Hogwarts. Whatever whispers the Carrows had put in the Wizengamot’s ears had come to fruition. He really should reward them.

He can move through the castle more freely with Dumbledore gone – not because the man was cleverer than his colleagues, only that he’d always ( _always_ , as many decades removed from the orphan thief Tom would ever be) been more suspicious, and ever-watchful. It is a relief.

Minerva will become Headmistress. Tom may be able to make a case for himself as Deputy Headmaster, particularly if he’s able to cast lethargy or confundus charms on his senior colleagues at opportune moments. Truly, he doesn’t want the minutiae of academic administration, but Hogwarts is _his_ , and he has had to conceal his lineage for as long as he’s known it. Much moreso after he’d killed Warren and had Hagrid expelled, but…. Regardless. He will provide for Slytherin’s castle.

And somehow, impossibly, he must also provide for Potter. Not because he wants to, strictly. But because Tom is once again in Potter’s confidence, and it is the most useful place to be. He wants to hear _all_ about Potter’s prophecy and impending death.

 _Their_ impending death.

His step falters.

He draws a cold breath into his lungs before entering his quarters. He had defied death before. Certainly he can do it a second time.


End file.
